Cabinet of Curiosities
by Like-A-Raven-14
Summary: Sam has a few problems when he runs into a friend from high school. Like the fact that Vanessa thinks he's just a perfectly normal guy. Dean knows better. And balancing the past and present is going to be tricky, even before he factors in the ghost.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Written for the Supernatural Big Bang over at livejournal, where some amazing art exists to accompany this fic. Thanks, as always, to my awesome betas, On-A-Dare and varadia, and to Gramarye, for research assistance. This story is a semi-sequel to "Things They Would Not Teach Me of in College" and while you don't need to have read it to follow this, this story does give away a couple of its plot points. I do not own Supernatural, its characters, or its world. Alas.

The problem – well, one of the problems – with spending a significant portion of your life in a car is that it gives you way too much time to think.

And yeah, there are other things you can do. You can listen to music (though you only get pick it if you are the one driving, which Sam usually isn't). Not that music keeps you from thinking. You can sleep, and Sam does, even with his brother's music blaring, but eventually you wake up. And sometimes dreaming is worse than thinking, anyway. You can talk, but when you spend twenty-four hours a day with someone, you run out of purposeless conversation. And there isn't always a purposeful discussion to have.

And when there _is_ a purposeful discussion to have, one or both of them often doesn't want to actually have it. So despite the fact that Sam suspects they're both thinking about what happened at that hotel in Connecticut, they're sure as hell not going to talk about destinies or demons, or any promises Dean made to Sam – or Dad – about destinies and demons.

Or much of anything else. Dean keeps the music loud and his eyes on the road.

So Sam thinks. And to keep from thinking about all the stuff he doesn't want to think about, he does things like list all fifty states, in alphabetical order, from Alabama to Wyoming. And then in reverse alphabetical order, from Wyoming to Alabama. In the order they were admitted to the Union, from Delaware to Hawaii. He names all the bones in the human body, from cranium to distal phalanges. All the bones he's personally broken, from metacarpals to radius. All the bones _Dean's_ broken, from clavicle to coccyx. He tries to remember every single item in his duffle bag. In the first aid kit. In the trunk—

"We need a new shovel," Sam says, halfway though his mental list. They had recently left one in a cemetery during a particularly hasty retreat.

It's the first time either of them has spoken in over an hour, since they had been leaving a Hardee's after lunch, and Sam asked if Dean needed him to drive.

Dean hadn't.

Now Dean turns the music down about half a decibel. "What?"

"We need a new shovel," Sam says.

"Yeah, I guess we do."

"There's a Lowe's at the next exit."

Dean gives him a _you know this how?_ look.

"We stopped there when I was sixteen," Sam says.

"Dude, how do you do that?" Dean asks. "Remember where we stopped, what, seven years ago?"

"I don't know," Sam says. "Just do."

"Whatever, Mr. Yellow Pages. Let your fingers do the walking." Dean nods toward Sam's right wrist, eyes still on the road ahead. "Speaking of, how's your wrist?"

Sam turns his hand, half-experimentally. The cast has been off for a day now. He's still moving it a little gingerly, still getting used to not having the weight and restriction of the cast there, but there's nothing wrong with it. "Fine."

"Good," Dean says. "I'm sure you've missed that half of your sex life."

"What?" Sam says and instantly regrets it.

"Well, you've got two functioning wrists now. That's, like, double your pleasure, double your fun, right?"

"Classy," Sam says. "Turn left at the bottom of the exit ramp, take the first right."

Dean laughs and turns the music back up. Sam spends the rest of the drive thinking of advertising slogans. And trying not to think of the creative new uses his brother would find for them.

X

There are two reasons Sam knows where to find a Lowe's in Middle-of-Nowhere, Virginia. Or in literally dozens of other places around the country. He's not about to tell Dean either of them.

When he was little, he had liked home improvement stores. He had been fascinated by the fact that people actually bought things like faucets and chandeliers and _doors_. Imagine owning a _door_, having a space you could decide you wanted to close off and just going and buying a door! Of course, Dad was usually buying shovels and road salt and stuff like that, _hunting stuff_, but stores like Lowe's were, to an eight-year-old Sam, warehouses of possibilities and glimpses into the way normal people lived.

So that was the first reason. He remembered them without even really trying, and that led to the second reason. Because one day, when he was ten or eleven, Dad said something about needing a handsaw, and Sam said, "There's a Home Depot in Lake Horn. We stopped there last year." And Dad turned around and smiled and said he thought Sammy was right.

And it was the smile that Dean usually got – the _good job, son, I'm proud of you_ smile that was always and _only_ about hunting, never about grades or soccer games. There were smiles for those things, of course, but they were different. There was something about the hunting smile that was like an invitation to a secret club. One that, as a general rule, Sam wasn't invited to join, even though Dean had been in it when he was Sam's age, no matter what age Sam was.

But this was something Sam could do to help with the Important Stuff that mattered to Dad. And, more over, it was something that Dean couldn't do. If Dad had told Dean to go get a sledgehammer, Dean would have found a way to get one, legal or otherwise. But Sam was the one who had been able to tell him where he could buy one along any stretch of road they had traveled before.

He had also been able to tell Dad where to find hospitals, twenty-four hour diners, and public libraries.

By the time Sam was fifteen, he hadn't cared about getting to be in the hunting club, or had convinced himself that he didn't. But family habits die hard, and so he had gone on supplying the information that there was an Ace Hardware on Maple Street, a Lowe's off Route 29, a Home Depot in Norman, but that one had the assistant manager who had asked too many questions and maybe they should go to the one in Moore or one of the ones in Oklahoma City, instead.

And even now, with Dad dead and gone and past expressing approval or disapproval for either of them anywhere but in their own thoughts, Sam can say, "Up ahead, on the left."

And Dean can still get you a sledgehammer, if you need one.

This Lowe's had been new, seven years ago, when they had stopped here on one of their endless summer trips from nowhere to nowhere. It's just starting to show its age now, a little shabby around the edges, though still clean and bright and tidy. It's early afternoon on a Thursday, unseasonably warm for February at 60 degrees, which may account for its being a little busier than Sam expected.

On the way into the store, they run down the checklist of other tools and equipment they may need to buy or replace, and Dean decides he wants a socket wrench. They split up, with Sam going to look at shovels while Dean heads for tools.

There is no easy or graceful way to carry a shovel through a home improvement store, and Sam feels a little ridiculous on his way over to the tools section. Where he finds plenty of wrenches, but no sign of Dean.

This means one of two things has happened. Either Dean has gone over to the shovels, looking for Sam, or Dean has found something more interesting than wrenches to investigate.

Sam's money, always, is on the latter, and that just leaves one question: blonde, brunette, or redhead?

The laugh from the next aisle is very feminine, very flirty, and very much not what one expects to find in a hardware store.

Sam rolls his eyes and follows the sound.

Brunette it is.

A brunette in a form-fitting blue sweater that stops an inch above the waist-band of her equally form-fitting jeans, and high-heeled ankle boots. She's not what one expects to find in a hardware store, either.

Her back is to Sam, but Dean sees him, and he gets the _not now, dude_ look. Sam mouths the words _out of your league_ and starts to go back to reassess his shovel options or whatever to kill however much time Dean's going to spend talking to the brunette in the blue sweater.

But the fact that Dean is focusing on something other than her cleavage has apparently caught this girl's attention, and she turns to see what he's looking at.

Sam has a sudden sympathy for a deer staring into the lights of an oncoming car. This is really, _really_ not what one expects to find in a hardware store.

"Oh my God," the brunette says. "Sam? Sam Winchester, is that _you_?"

And if Sam thought carrying a shovel through a store was awkward, it's nothing compared to trying to figure out what to do with the shovel you're carrying through a hardware store when you suddenly get hugged by a girl you haven't seen in five years.

"I can't believe it," she says, and over her shoulder, Sam can see a truly epic example of Dean's _dude, what the hell?_ face.

"Me, either," Sam says.

"I'm sorry," she says, finally letting him go, and looking back at Dean. "Sorry, I went to high school with this guy and I haven't seen him in years and—"

Sam clears his throat. "Um, Vanessa, this is my older brother, Dean. Dean, this is Vanessa Foster. I graduated from high school with her."

Five years ago.

In another city.

In another _state_.

In the time when he had known that he was going to leave for Stanford, he just hadn't told his father or his brother yet. Vanessa had, in fact, been one of the first people he'd told, part of a small group of other seniors who had adopted the new kid and given him a social circle at his ninth and final high school.

"I don't think I remembered that you had a brother," Vanessa says, but rushes on before Sam, or Dean, has much time to wonder whether it was something she had forgotten or never known. "Wow, it is such a small world, isn't it? What are you doing here? Do you live nearby?"

"No," Sam says, shaking his head. "We're just passing through. We're on a road trip."

"And you stopped to buy a shovel?" Vanessa asks.

What is he supposed to say? _Yes, well, you never know when you're going to have to dig up a grave_?

"Ah, for snow," Sam says. And then, quickly, before she can ask why anyone needs a shovel for snow on an unseasonably warm day, he asks, "What about you? What are you doing here?"

"Well, the long answer is a really long story, and the short answer is that I'm sort of house sitting."

"Vanessa was just telling me that she's having trouble with her kitchen sink," Dean adds, finally deigning to take part in the conversation.

"Yeah?" Sam asks. "What's wrong with it?"

"I don't really know," Vanessa says. "It just keeps clogging up. I've poured like five bottles of Drano down it and it works for a day or two, and then it's backed up again. The house is ancient, so it may just be that it's got really bad plumbing. I've called Professor Hudson about calling a plumber; it's his house, but he's not exactly nearby. He's in Greenville, back in Carolina." Vanessa pauses, and then adds, as an afterthought and mostly to Dean, "South, not North, of course."

"Well, of course," Dean says, and gets rewarded with a dazzling smile.

"Anyway," Vanessa continues, "he keeps promising he'll call someone and get him out to look at things, but he hasn't yet. So I came to buy a plunger. Though your brother was just telling me he thinks I might need a snake instead, but I have no idea what to do with one of those."

Five years, Sam thinks, have done nothing to diminish Vanessa's ability to talk. He can remember any number of days she didn't finish eating because she'd been too busy talking through their lunch period.

He says it without really meaning to. "Would you like us to take a look at it for you?"

He's not sure, but he thinks what Dean just muttered under his breath was _Christo_.

"Um, not that I'm really in a position to look a gift horse in the mouth, but do you actually know how to fix a sink? With a snake or whatever?"

"Yeah, of course," Sam says.

Vanessa looks from him to Dean to the shovel, like something isn't quite adding up. "So, you're, like, itinerant plumbers?"

"It's more that we've dealt with our share of hard-to-reach landlords," Sam says. "You learn to fix all kinds of things on your own."

"It's way out in the county, and not really on the road to much of anywhere, so it's probably out of your way," Vanessa says.

"It's really no problem," Sam says. "We're happy to."

He's not sure why he's pushing it. He's not even sure why he offered in the first place.

Vanessa looks at them again, eyes going from Sam to Dean and back again, like she's looking for signs that they're either insane or depraved. Or wondering if the shovel is to _bury_ a body. And then she smiles, "I was thinking it wasn't a great idea to ask strange men back to the house, no offense, but hey, I know you better than I would know the plumber, right? So, sure, I'd appreciate it. And, hey, I'll fix you dinner or something."

Sam's ready for it when Dean smacks the back of his head as they follow Vanessa to the registers. And he decides not to give Dean the satisfaction of a reaction.

So Dean, of course, hits him again.

X

Vanessa, to Sam's surprise, drives a blue Ford F-150 made sometime before they had started high school. He was expecting something a little more, well, girly.

Dean waves off her offer to write out directions for them. "We'll just follow you."

"But what if I lose you?" she asks.

"Oh, sweetheart, you're not going to lose me," Dean says. "There is no way."

Vanessa hesitates, but lets it go with a "Suit yourself. I'll see you at the house, then."

Dean waits until they are out of the parking lot, if barely, before he says, "So, are we doing this because you hit that in high school, or because you didn't?"

"It wasn't like that. She was just a friend," Sam says.

"Seriously? You didn't even try to hit that?"

"She had a boyfriend, Dean." And Sam had had something awfully close to a girlfriend.

"So this isn't the chick you took to the prom?" Dean asks.

"No, that was someone else." Sam wonders what Dean remembers more – that Sam had gone to the prom, or that he and Dad had had a massive argument about his wanting to go and Dean had had to smooth it over.

"So this is about making up for lost opportunities?"

"You know, people all over the world do things every day just to be nice and helpful. Without trying to get into some girl's pants."

"Not when the girl looks like that one," Dean says, pointing at the truck in front of them.

"She's an old friend from school, and we're doing her a favor."

"Right. Just remember that the last time we did a favor for one of your 'old friends from school,' a shapeshifter tried to kill her and framed me for it."

"Yeah, well, your last old friend almost got us run down by a killer truck."

Sam regrets it the second he says it, but it's said, and there's no unsaying it.

"Yeah, I guess so," Dean says, easily, and then turns the radio up too loud for conversation.

And sings along.

They follow Vanessa out of town, onto a state highway that drops from four lanes to three and then down to two before she turns off of it. They follow her down some winding back county roads, turning left and right and then right again, and finally down a driveway that must be half a mile long.

They reach the top of a hill, and the house comes into view for the first time.

Dean stops the car. _And_ kills the radio.

They both stare at the sprawling mess of a house. Sam can see where the center started out as a fairly typical farm house that was then added on to as needed, catch as catch can. The room built as an extension on the left doesn't look that out of place. He has no idea what to make of the three-story tower on the right, though. There's a sagging porch and an even saggier balcony and the whole place looks a bit . . . dilapidated. In fact, Sam thinks the word _dilapidated_ might have been added to the English language solely for the purpose of describing this house.

And if all of that weren't weird enough, there have to be more than a dozen garden gnomes between them and the front door.

Twenty seconds tick by, and then thirty.

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"Why did the car stop?"

"It's frightened."

"Yeah, and the communism was just a red herring. Let's go."

Vanessa is waiting for them, leaned up against her truck, holding her new plunger and drain snake.

She has correctly interpreted their pause, and greets them with a bright smile. "Pretty wild, huh? Wait till you see the inside," she says, pulling out her keys and leading the way up the front steps.

The inside is one part natural history museum, one part flea market, one part horror movie set, and all parts freaky as hell.

Dean stands in the foyer, just inside the door, an expression of skeptical disgust on his face.

"It's not _that_ bad," Vanessa says.

"Um, yeah, this is 'that bad,'" Dean says.

"Okay, so it's a little weird," Vanessa concedes.

"Sweetheart, this is the house the Addams Family passed on because the ambiance was just too damn creepy," Dean says. "And what the hell is that?" he adds, pointing at a taxidermy animal in the corner.

"A badger," Sam and Vanessa say together.

"Right," Dean says, moving two steps to the right to get a better look at it. "I can see that. But why is it wearing a fucking wedding dress?"

"It's Miss Badgersham," Vanessa says, almost fondly. "That's what I call her, anyway."

"You named the damn thing?" Dean says.

"Well, what else would you call moldering badger in a wedding dress, hanging out in a house like this? She's Miss Badgersham. Obviously."

"Oh, obviously," Dean says, like there's nothing obvious about it. Sam is not sure his brother is getting the slightly oblique Dickens reference. He is sure his brother is starting to wonder if Vanessa is nuts.

"Vanessa?" Sam asks, quickly, to get them off the topic of Miss Badgersham. "How did you wind up here, again?"

"Like I said, it's kind of a long story."

"The Cliff's Notes version is fine," Dean tells her, at the same time Sam says, "We've got time."

"Well, the house belonged to my college advisor's aunt and uncle," she says. "They travelled a lot, and they collected whatever looked interesting from everywhere they went. I kind of think of it as one of those old cabinets of curiosities. It's like a museum of the interesting and bizarre and random. There's no theme or rhyme or reason, it's just whatever caught their eye. At least as far as I can tell."

Sam is certainly not going to argue with the assessment that it's bizarre. He looks back up at Miss Badgersham. (And he's a little surprised to find himself thinking of the badger by "name," but Vanessa's right. It's a pretty obvious name once you know it. He almost wants to check and see if it's only wearing one shoe.)

"So that's how all this crap got here," Dean says. He doesn't look at Vanessa. Sam thinks he might be trying to stare down Miss Badgersham. "How'd _you_ get here, sweetheart?"

"My advisor, Professor Hudson, got a call from his aunt and uncle's lawyer last year, who said they had died and left him the house and all the contents. I think he came up for a weekend, or something, and discovered that it was kind of more than he could deal with while having a full time job somewhere else. So he hired me to come live here and sort through everything, get rid of the obvious junk, try to figure out what kinds of repairs it needs, and just generally keep an eye on things."

"And you didn't call him back and say, 'Torch the place'?" Dean says. He's finally pulled his attention away from the badger, and is examining a bright blue clawfoot tub full of what appear to be those little beanbag animals people were obsessed with collecting a few years back.

"Do you want the tour?" Vanessa asks, with a grin and a gesture to the door on their right.

Sam doesn't think anything is going to top the foyer.

He's wrong.

There are over a dozen rooms, plus the tower, and they're all full of . . . Sam doesn't even know the words. He thinks Vanessa's term, _cabinet of curiosities_, is about as apt a description as he's going to find. Looking around, he can see a foot and a half tall amethyst geode, a collection of Mounties memorabilia, the door of a New York City taxi cab, a shrunken head, and a cauldron that Sam could have comfortably sat in.

And that's just in the first room.

There's a bedroom upstairs that is filled with shelf after shelf of canned goods, and another, across the hall, that is full of dolls. ("Oh, Christ, not again," Dean mutters.) At the very top of the tower, they find—

"Is that a guillotine?" Sam asks.

"A replica. I don't think it actually works," Vanessa says. She pauses, and then adds, "Though I haven't tested it."

Dean looks around the room, like he's trying to decide where to even start salting and burning things, and then says, "Let's take a look at this sink of yours."

Vanessa leads them back down to the foyer, and then through the door to the left. The kitchen must be the room he could see built onto the far end of the original house. Sam is expecting bundles of herbs and creepy jars of unknown vegetable matter and possibly a hearth with an open cooking fire and something roasting on a spit.

Instead they step into a kitchen that is surprising modern, by comparison, even though it's done in 1970's olive green and gold and orange. But it's not cluttered, and everything is clean and tidy except for the dirty dishes piled next to the clogged sink.

"Did we just walk into another house?" Dean asks.

"The first thing I did, when I got here a month ago, was to get the kitchen in order and clean out that bedroom." Vanessa points at a room off the side of the kitchen. "There's a full bathroom through there, too, so I kind of live at this end of the house and work in the rest of it."

"Good plan," Dean says.

They spend a half an hour looking, but can't find anything wrong with the sink or the pipes below it. The problem may be further down the pipes, or it may just be beyond their amateur plumber abilities. They manage to get the water to drain, through liberal use of drain clearer and a lot of work with the new plunger and snake.

Sam suspects that their approach is not that different from what Vanessa would have done without them, but she's gracious about being grateful, anyway.

"Just give me a minute or two to change," Vanessa says, "and I'll get started on dinner. Y'all are staying for dinner, right? I mean, that was the deal – you fix my sink, I fix you dinner."

Sam's response of "We wouldn't want to put you to any trouble," is cut short and drowned out by Dean's, "That'd be great, thanks."

"Wonderful," Vanessa says. "It's going to be really nice to have company. And we can catch up, or talk about old times, or whatever."

That's kind of what Sam is afraid of.

Because the "old times" when he knew Vanessa are times he's not sure he wants to drag open for inspection with Dean. He'd been keeping a lot of secrets in those days, from both of them. And while he doesn't think Dean is likely to tell Vanessa about the hunting, Vanessa knows a few things Sam has never told Dean. And she doesn't know that they're secrets.

"You know of any motels or whatever around here?" Dean asks her.

"Well, there's the It'll Do Motel," Vanessa says. "It's back toward town, but it looks pretty rundown. And then in town there's a Holiday Inn and, um, I think one or two of the other chains, too, but I don't remember which ones. Or, um, I guess y'all could stay here, if you wanted. I mean, I've got six bedrooms."

Sam opens his mouth to politely decline, but is once again cut off by his brother.

"If you don't mind," Dean says.

"No, it's fine. And, like I said, it's nice to have company. So, please, stay."

"Thanks," Dean says.

And it's Sam's turn to mutter _Christo_ under his breath.

"Okay. So, I'll just be a minute or two," she says, heading into her bedroom. "If you're hungry, just help yourselves to anything."

Dean goes promptly to the fridge. "Yogurt, grapes, little carrots, weird cheese, more little carrots – chick food," he tells Sam. "Wait, I think I found something." He reaches to the back of the fridge and pulls out a Sam Adams beer. "You want one?"

"We should go," Sam says, quietly, with a look at the now closed door to Vanessa's room.

Dean stops in the middle of opening his beer. "I thought you wanted to spend time with this girl."

"Well, I have. And we shouldn't put her to any trouble, and—"

"She offered."

"Yeah, but she probably didn't expect us to say yes."

Dean scrubs his hand across his face. "Sometimes, I really don't get you, Sammy. But, hey, if you really want to go, we can fake that we got a phone call or something."

Dean looks tired.

And if Dean is letting himself _look_ tired, chances are he _feels_ exhausted.

And it's not like they're headed anywhere in particular. Maybe it's okay to take one day and not drive till sunset or later, hit a diner or a bar, collapse into motel beds, and then get up and do it all again.

Sam hesitates for a second longer, and then shakes his head. "No. It would be pretty rude to bail now." He takes a beer from the fridge. "But you get the room with the dolls, man."

Vanessa comes back into the kitchen, wearing Keds and yoga pants and a Furman University sweatshirt, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail. She's still pretty – it's Vanessa, after all – but the look is relaxed and comfortable, less put-together. She laughs at Dean's far-from-subtle fallen face.

"You didn't think I hung around at home dressed like that, did you?" she asks.

"Kind of hoping," Dean admits.

"I've discovered that a tight sweater increases the chances that some guy will stop to help me at some place like a hardware store, or better yet, when I'm hauling junk to the dump. By about a hundred and twenty percent." She shrugs. "What can I say? Y'all are shallow."

"Well, yeah, but with good cause," Dean says, with a low level leer.

"You'll have to forgive Dean," Sam says, giving him the _cut it out, dude_ look.

Vanessa shakes her head and opens the pantry. "Oh, Sam, I have been hit on by much smoother operators than your brother. Most of them crashed and burned, too."

"Hey, I am just getting warmed up here," Dean objects.

"If that's the wind up, there better be one hell of a pitch at the end," Vanessa tells him. "Pasta going to work for y'all?"

She turns down offers of help with dinner. Dean settles in at the kitchen table with another beer. The conversation seems to be mostly Dean's hitting on Vanessa in increasingly obvious and absurd ways. Vanessa's reaction is to shake her head, or roll her eyes, and then to cheerfully tell Dean that the way to a woman's heart – or wherever it is he's trying to get – just might be through washing her dirty dishes.

Sam feels the way he often does when the other people around are Dean and a pretty girl – in the way. It's more annoying, he decides, when the girl in question is his old friend and not Dean's. Even if he doesn't have any real right to feel that way. And even if he's not actually making any effort to join the conversation. In some ways, he thinks Dean might be keeping this up to cover the awkwardness that is Sam's being utterly unable to think of anything to say.

And when Dean gets up to wash the dishes, Sam no longer any doubts on the subject, because the look he shoots Sam is pure _could you be any lamer?_

Sam asks for the bathroom and gets waved to the one through Vanessa's room. It's a stalling tactic, at best, but maybe a couple of minutes will be enough to figure out what he's doing here, and why he's doing it.

He doesn't realize that the soap next to Vanessa's sink strongly smells like some kind of flower until he's washing his hands. Which, unfortunately, also now strongly smell like some kind of flower.

He can still hear them in the kitchen when he's done, and he stalls for a couple of minutes in Vanessa's room, hoping the floral smell will fade a little.

Here, as in the kitchen and the bathroom, everything is neat and orderly and normal. There are blue curtains at the windows, and a blue and white quilt on the bed, pulled up neatly and watched over by a stuffed grey cat (plush, not taxidermy). There's a laptop on the desk next to a small pile of DVDs, _Mean Girls_ and _Legally Blonde_ and _Elizabethtown_. She's covered the dresser with framed pictures and a neat line of bottles of perfumes and lotions. And there's a small bookcase, full of more DVDs and paperback mysteries and romance novels with bright covers. And, across the bottom shelf, a row of yearbooks and scrapbooks.

Sam glances back through the open door to the kitchen, where Dean is now telling a somewhat fictionalized account of a bar fight (fictionalized in that he's leaving out the part about the bartender's being a ghost). That should take a while.

Sam pulls the scrapbook labeled BHS SR YR off the shelf and sets it on the desk.

Vanessa has saved everything: ticket stubs, newspaper clippings, programs from concerts and talent shows, photographs, flyers. There's even a pressed flat paper cone from popcorn at a football game.

Sam flips through the fall, things that happened before he arrived at Bicentennial High just after Christmas, passing Homecoming and a production of _Once Upon a Mattress_ that starred their friend Peter. Winter brings basketball games and a semiformal dance that Sam remembers happening about a week after they moved to town, and that he had not attended. And then comes spring, with baseball, and choir and band concerts, the awards assembly at the end of the year, and then the prom.

He can remember buying a cream-colored ticket like the one Vanessa has pasted in here, next to the photograph of her and her boyfriend, Jake, posing in her front yard. There's a series of pictures of the transformation of the gym, documenting the additions of streamers and balloons and glitter; Vanessa must have helped with the decorations.

And there's a photograph Sam has never seen before, one he didn't even know had been taken. He has his arm around Clare, the girl he took to the prom and never quite had the courage to refer to as his girlfriend. Clare is looking at whoever took the picture.

Sam is looking at Clare.

"We all were so young, weren't we?" Vanessa asks. Sam just barely manages not to jump at the sound of her voice. She's standing just behind him and he didn't even hear her come into the room.

_Ridiculously young_, Sam thinks, looking at the picture of his barely eighteen-year old self, who had thought it was possible to run away from this insane life his father had committed them to. _Ridiculously young, and even more ridiculously naïve._

"I'm snooping, aren't I?" Sam says. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be going through your books."

"It's fine. It's not like you're reading my diary. There's really no point in having things like scrapbooks if no one ever looks at them."

"Do you and Clare keep in touch?" Sam asks her. He hasn't thought about Clare Ellison in years, but he suddenly wants to know that she's out there and doing well and happy. And Vanessa seems like the sort who keeps up with everyone and who will be organizing reunions and things like that.

"That's funny, I was about to ask you the same thing," Vanessa says. "No, she and her parents moved after graduation, maybe a week or two after you did. I never heard from either of you after you left. I've looked for her on Facebook and stuff, but I've never found her."

"We lost touch," Sam says.

It would be more honest, though, to say that they hadn't even tried to stay in touch. Sam was well-versed in departures by then, and Clare had been headed to Wellesley. Or maybe it was Smith. One of the women's colleges in Massachusetts, at any rate, and thousands of miles from Stanford. What would have been the point?

"What are we looking at?" Dean asks, joining them.

"High school," Sam says, and closes the book on the couples at the prom.

A timer dings in the kitchen, and Vanessa excuses herself.

Dean looks down at the cover of the scrapbook Sam has just closed. Sam waits for him to say something about it, or try to open it.

But all Dean says is, "Dude, you smell like a chick," and then goes into the bathroom.

X

Vanessa serves pasta and Italian sausage, garlic bread and salad. Sam notices that she puts about twice as much on the plates she fixes for them as she does on the plate she fixes for herself, and it all has a kind of surreal feeling of normality to it, like they do this all the time.

Sam isn't sure what to make of Vanessa. He doesn't remember a girl who was enough of a flirt to keep up with Dean, though to be fair, he was mostly around her when she was around her boyfriend. But he also doesn't remember a girl who would be coping well with being out in the middle of no where, alone, in a house apparently decorated by Vincent Price. He remembers a social butterfly, and one who was sensitive and maybe a little prone to hysteria. It makes finding her here, calmly bantering with Dean and living in a curiosity cabinet of a house all very odd.

And he's not being fair to her, and he knows it. She's not the girl he knew five years ago any more than he's the guy she knew then, but all that doesn't quite stop him from saying, "You've really changed."

"Oh, I know," Vanessa says, over his horrified attempts to apologize. "Trust me, I know." She turns to Dean. "I was _such_ a drama queen in high school. I don't know how anyone ever took me even remotely seriously. My mother used to dismiss half of what I said and did with the explanation, 'That's just Vanessa being Vanessa.' And I usually knew I was being ridiculous, but by high school, people just kind of expected it, and I felt like I was supposed to act a little silly. And then I got to Furman, and I wasn't surrounded by people who'd known me all my life, and I guess I felt like I could stop being what other people expected me to be all the time."

"Oh," Sam says. Going to college to reinvent yourself and get away from family expectations? Well, there are more awkward topics they could get into with Dean there, but not many.

"Drama queen, huh?" Dean asks.

"Oh, God, yes. I mean, I'm the one who thought she saw a ghost at the prom."

And there it is. One of few topics that's going to trump _college reinvention_ on the awkwardness meter.

"There was a ghost at your prom?" Dean's tone stays light, but he has set his fork down, and his focus has sharpened.

The question is for Sam, but it's Vanessa who answers. "Well, of course not. It was just a story our friend Peter told at lunch one day. But I was convinced I'd seen her in the mirror in the bathroom, and let me tell you, I could _scream_ in those days. Do you remember, Sam?"

"Yes," Sam says, shortly. He remembers. He's just never mentioned it to Dean.

Dean's eyes dart over to Vanessa and then back to Sam. It couldn't have been clearer if he'd actually said it. _We are not going into this in front of a civilian, but we are sure as hell going into this, Sammy._

"So," Sam says, before Vanessa can reopen the book on their high school days. "What's the non-Cliff's Notes version of how you wound up here?"

Vanessa's briefly puzzled expression leads Sam to believe she found that subject change to be rather abrupt, but at least that doesn't keep her from answering.

"Well, like I said, Professor Hudson needed someone to look after it and clean it out. And I . . . okay, I had this boyfriend in college. Walker. And right before graduation, he asked me to marry him, and I said yes, because we'd been together for two years and getting married was the next step, right? So we were planning this big wedding for November and everyone was so happy for us and everything."

Vanessa sighs, looking a little dreamy. "And then I woke up one morning, and the sunlight was coming through the curtains in our bedroom, and it was just a gorgeous September late summer day. And I looked down at him, still sleeping next to me, and I thought, _This is the man I'm going to marry. And he's an arrogant, self-absorbed jerk and I am way too good for him_," Vanessa says, dreaminess abruptly done. "So I packed my bag, woke him up, gave him back his ring, and left."

"His name was Walker?" Dean asks.

"Edmund Walker Rutledge McQueeney. The third."

"And it took you two years to figure out he was a jerk?"

"I know, right? Plus he called me 'Nessie' and thought it was endearing. That alone should have been a sign. Anyway, after I left him, I moved back in with my parents for a while, but that was awkward. There was kind of a feeling of, you know, it was just 'Vanessa being Vanessa.' And breaking off your engagement ten weeks before the wedding is pretty drama-queenish behavior, I guess. So after a couple of months, I called Professor Hudson to ask if he had any suggestions or leads for me, for something to do with a BA in art history and a willingness to live anywhere but within a hundred mile radius of my parents or Walker, and here I am."

"In the creepiest house in Virginia."

"It's really not that cre—" Vanessa breaks off, turning toward the sound of an odd noise coming from the front hall.

Sam looks at Dean, whose focus has again sharpened.

"What was that?" Vanessa asks, and goes to investigate before they can stop her.

Miss Badgersham is lying on its side, in the middle of the floor. Sam looks up at where it had been perched before. It _could_ have just fallen, maybe, but it's just a little too far away.

Vanessa rolls her eyes and puts the badger back where it had been. "This house," she mutters.

"Stuff like that happen often?" Dean asks.

"Stuff like what?" Vanessa asks.

"You know, weird shit like things falling when they shouldn't?" Dean asks.

"Odd noises, sudden cold spots, things you can't explain," Sam adds.

Vanessa looks at them like she thinks they've gone insane. "It's a perfectly normal house," she says, and it's about equal parts dismissive and determined.

"No, lady, it's not," Dean says.

"Okay, maybe not _normal_, but it's an old house," Vanessa says, as the lights start to flicker a little. "It has problems and quirks, like bad plumbing and glitches in the wiring and drafts and –"

There's a faint buzz, which quickly escalates to a loud chittering sound in the walls. Dean reaches one hand toward the gun concealed under the back of his shirt. Sam moves toward a coat rack that looks like it might be wrought iron.

Vanessa's tone begins to lose its certainty, in a way Sam recognizes. The rational part of her brain is torn between _this isn't happening_ and _but it is, and it sure as hell isn't a glitch._

"—and mice in the walls and –"

The chair by the front door slides across the room, and Vanessa scrambles backwards, out of its way.

"— and uneven floorboards and _what the hell is wrong with this house?_" she concludes, half-throwing herself into Sam's arms and burying her face in his shirt.

Over the top of her head, Sam can see the word HARLOT writing itself across the opposite wall in foot-high, bright red letters.

"Get her out of here," Dean snaps, and Sam steers Vanessa out the front door, turning so that she won't see the word.

Dean follows them a second later.

The lights flicker wildly in every room in the house.

They stand watching for almost a minute, and then Vanessa says again, "What the _hell_ is wrong with this house?"

"Pretty sure it's haunted, sweetheart."


	2. Chapter 2

Dean drives them to the sort of place Sam thinks Vanessa wouldn't even consider staying in alone. He's a little surprised to see that the flickering sign really does read _It'll Do Motel_. He had assumed that was a term Vanessa made up.

Well, there's something to be said for truth in advertising.

Vanessa hasn't said a word since Dean told her she was living with a ghost. Now, as Dean goes to see about rooms, Sam turns around so he can see her, sitting in the backseat of the Impala. "You okay?"

Vanessa first nods and then shakes her head.

"It'll be okay," Sam says. "We, Dean and I, we take care of stuff like this."

"Stuff like ghosts?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "It's kind of the family business."

"Oh," Vanessa says. She tries for a smile and manages about half of one. "Well, that makes more sense than traveling plumbers. Sort of."

Dean taps on the window, and Sam opens his door. "Rooms 13 and 14," he says, dangling a pair of keys from his hand.

"There is no way in hell I am sleeping in Room 13 tonight," Vanessa says. "Call me superstitious all y'all want, but there is no way."

They get her settled into Room 14, which connects to Room 13 through an interior door. Vanessa sits down on the edge of the bed further from the door, and looks around. "Very shabby chic," she says. "Without the chic."

She's trying, Sam knows, to be calm about all this, but her voice is shaky and she still looks like . . . well, like someone who just saw a ghost.

Dean pulls a bottle of whiskey from his bag, pours a generous shot into one of the motel's plastic cups, and hands it to Vanessa.

She swallows it in one go, and then grimaces. "That was the worst whiskey I've ever had in my life," she tells Dean.

Dean smiles at her. "Yeah, well, we ain't exactly top shelf guys."

"Yeah, well, that wasn't even middle shelf," she says.

The whiskey might be crappy, but it – or the conversation about it – seems to have done what it was supposed to do. Vanessa has had a moment to collect herself.

Sam sits down opposite her, on the edge of the other bed. Dean leans back against the dresser.

"So, let's talk about this house of yours, Vanessa," Sam says.

"Okay." Vanessa nods and then takes a deep breath. "What about it?"

"Has stuff like that happened before?" Dean asks.

"Yes and no," Vanessa says. "I mean, it's never been that much, but the lights will flicker, and sometimes the power in general, too. There are some odd creaking noises and that sort of thing, but old houses have those, right? Floors settle or something?"

Sam ignores the rationalization she hasn't quite let go of yet, and moves on with his questions. "Has anything else ever fallen over, like the badger did?"

"Once or twice," she says. "But I just figured it was drafts or, I don't know, some raccoon or something got in looking for food."

"Raccoon?" Dean asks.

"Well, it made more sense to me than a ghost," she says. "And to be honest, it still makes more sense to me than a ghost."

"Ghosts and sense very rarely go together," Dean says.

"Anything else?" Sam asks, steering the conversation back onto the topic of Vanessa's house.

"Like what?

"Does it ever get really cold all of a sudden?"

Vanessa thinks for a few seconds before she answers the question. "Sometimes, maybe. But it's not a terribly well insulated house, and I've only lived there a month, and it's winter. So it can be pretty chilly, anyway. So I'm not completely sure."

"Okay," Dean says. "Have you ever found any writing on any of the walls?"

"Writing on the walls?"

Sam and Dean exchange glances. So she didn't see the writing tonight. Sam didn't expect her to have, given how they got her out of the house, but it's good to have it confirmed.

"Yeah, you know," Dean says, keeping the tone light but still business. "_Go away_, or _Sir Haunts-a-lot was here_ or anything like that?"

"That really happens?" Vanessa asks, and then shakes her head before then can answer. "No. Nothing on the walls."

"Okay. How about apparitions? Things flying across the room? Voices?" Sam asks.

Vanessa doesn't hesitate before she answers this time. "Nothing like that. That I think at that point, I probably would have given up on trying to convince myself it was just typical old house stuff, or a wayward raccoon."

"Yeah, well, that's 'cause you're not an idiot. Anything happen during the day, or is it all after the sun goes down?" Dean asks.

"I think it's all been at night," she says, slowly. "I mean, I've opened cupboards and had mice run out at me during the day, but that's just normal, right? Things like with the lights, and the stuff falling over, that's been in the evenings."

"Mice are probably normal," Sam says. "Anything else? Anything that made you uncomfortable or struck you as weird or that you just couldn't explain?"

Vanessa shakes her head. "I don't _think_ so."

"Okay," Dean says. "We're gonna get this taken care of."

"That's what Sam said. Y'all are, like, the Ghostbusters."

"Except way cooler. And better looking," Dean tells her. "So you don't need to worry."

"I'm not," she says. "Actually, in a weird way, I'm kind of relieved. I mean, I think that I knew something was wrong, I was just trying to convince myself that I was overreacting, and, well . . ."

"'Vanessa being Vanessa?'" Sam asks, using her phrase from earlier.

"Yeah, basically. So now at least I know I'm not just imagining things."

"You're definitely not imagining things," Sam says.

"Are you going be okay in here alone for a few minutes?" Dean asks.

"Yeah, sure. I'll be fine," Vanessa says. She doesn't quite sound like she believes herself, though.

"Just a couple of minutes," Dean says. "Promise." He looks at Sam and then jerks a nod toward the parking lot.

"Hey, Sam?" Vanessa asks, and they both stop. "I'm sorry, I know you have stuff to talk about and we have problems in the here and now, but I have to ask. Was there a ghost at our prom? I mean, the DJ had all that trouble with his equipment and I can still remember what that girl in the mirror looked like and—"

"No," Sam says. "No, I looked into it that night and I didn't find anything. It probably really was just an electrical glitch and the power of suggestion. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she says. "I just wondered. After everything tonight, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." He smiles at her, just a little. "We'll be right back."

Once the door to the room has closed behind them, Dean says, "Okay, what the hell is all this about ghost at your prom?"

Especially since Vanessa just brought it up, Sam is not surprised when this is Dean's first question. Even though Sam thinks it's hardly the time or the place.

But then, there isn't a time or a place Sam wants to have this conversation.

"There wasn't a ghost at my prom," he says, trying to keep the impatience out of his tone.

"Really? Because that's not what it sounds like."

"There was a ghost _story_ about my prom that one of our friends told. It was like the kind of ghost story somebody makes up at a summer camp, Dean. It didn't hold together, and when I looked into it, I didn't find anything."

"You didn't think that maybe Dad and I needed to know about it?"

Sam gives up on trying to not sound impatient. "Not really, no. There was no ghost, okay? I was there, I did the research. Sometimes, an electrical glitch is just an electrical glitch and a teenaged girl imagines something. Sometimes, there is no case."

"You still should have told us. You could have missed something."

"You really want to do this, Dean? You really want to have a fight about something that _didn't happen_? Five years ago?"

For a moment, Dean looks like that's exactly what he wants to do. And then he says, "All right, what do we know about your friend's haunted house?"

"Not much," Sam says, relieved to be back to the current haunting. "We know the ghost is mad. And it sounds like it's madder than it's been before, if this is the first significant activity Vanessa has seen."

"So something set it off. And since the only thing that we know of that has changed is you and me showing up –"

"—and since it's using the word _harlot_ –"

"—I'd say it doesn't like Vanessa having guys around." Dean pauses. "Or, you know, it doesn't like that we shoved a snake up her pipe."

"Jesus, Dean, would you can the innuendo for maybe ten minutes?"

Dean holds up both hands. "Hey, I'm talking about plumbing, Sammy. You're the one with his mind in the gutter. But I'm guessing that the ghost is a total prude –"

"—or a jealous type," Sam says.

"Two of my favorite varieties of angry spirit," Dean says. "Where do you want to start?"

"Research, I guess," Sam says. It's where he always starts. It's been his first move when faced with a problem all his life, whether that problem is how to write a paper, kill a ghost, or get into college. "I'll do an internet search tonight, hit the closest library or historical society tomorrow, and see what I can find on the house."

"And if it's not the house? The weird shit she's got in that place, it could be any kind of cursed objected or haunted painting or, hell, she could be running a damn ghost convention center and we could have a dozen of the sons of bitches."

"Then we'll have to go through it all."

"That'll take a month, Sammy."

"What's the alternative?"

"Torch the place," Dean suggests. "Pack it with salt and set it on fire."

"Dean, we are not going to torch the place. Vanessa is responsible for it."

"Well, I didn't really think you'd go for it." Dean looks back toward Room 14. "All right, so you'll hit the books, and I'll start on searching the house. Are you going to take her with you tomorrow? To the library or wherever? Might be safer, if the ghost's after her."

Sam wants to, and not just because it's safer for Vanessa. In light of everything – the flirting and the prom revelations and everything – Sam is far from enthusiastic about leaving Dean and Vanessa alone together for a few hours. But that won't get the problem solved, and it's not the best use of their respective skills or time.

"If the ghost's only active at night, it's probably better if she's with you. Vanessa's not from here, so she's not going to know the local lore. She is going to know at least some of what's in the house," Sam says.

"Yeah. Well, maybe we'll get lucky and you'll find something about the house online tonight."

"Maybe. I'm going to look into her fiancé, too. Make sure he's still alive."

Dean had already been headed back into the motel. Now he stops. "The Walker guy? Why?"

"The ghost got mad when we showed up, knocked over a bride, and wrote _harlot_ on the wall. Seems kind of like jealous boyfriend crap. He could be attached to something she brought with her, rather than something that was already there."

"Nah," Dean says, shaking his head.

"What do you mean, 'nah'?"

"When was the last time you heard someone use the word _harlot_, Sammy? If it had been _slut_ or maybe even _whore_, sure. But _harlot_? You can check, but this ghost is going to be old. Mark my words."

"Did you just say 'mark my words'?"

"Yeah. So?"

"Nothing."

"On this subject," Dean says.

"What subject?"

"Marking words. Are you going to tell her about the _harlot_ thing?"

Sam looks over at the window to her room. "I think we have to," he says. "It could still be there in the morning. It probably will. And we can't just let her walk in and see it."

That would be wrong. And mean.

"Yeah. How do you think she's going to take it?"

Translation: _We going to have a hysterical chick on our hands here, Sammy?_

Sam shrugs. "Five years ago, I'd have said she was going to freak out. But now? No idea."

"Peachy," Dean says.

"We can tell her in the morning," Sam says. Which gives them a few hours to figure out how.

"Good luck with that," Dean says.

Correction, then. Apparently, that gives _Sam_ a few hours to figure out how.

X

They have breakfast in a little diner with really good coffee and aspirations of being a café. The clerk in the motel recommended it. Sam waits until the waitress has left their food and refilled all three coffee cups, and then turns his attention to telling Vanessa about the ghost's writing.

People, in times of stress, often lose their grasp on the attitude they want to present to the world and fall back into gut reactions. And Vanessa's reaction last night, when the ghost had made its presence known, had been way more in line with the teenager he remembered flipping out from having seen what she thought was a ghost than it had been like the calm young woman they'd been talking to at dinner minutes before.

So he goes for easing her into telling her about the writing on the wall. It's not condescending or patronizing, or at least, Sam hopes it's neither of those things, but a careful and measured presenting of fact. He plans to explain what this tells them about the ghost, and how they can use it, and –

"Let me get this straight," Vanessa interrupts, setting her coffee down. "Some Casper the Prissy Ghost thinks I'm a slut?"

Dean gives Sam a look to say _all yours, dude_, but Vanessa doesn't give either of them a chance to respond.

"Well, fuck him," she says. "How do we get him out of my house?"

It was not the reaction Sam had been expecting, but he'll take it. So, apparently, will Dean.

Dean grins. "I like her," he tells Sam, and then turns back to Vanessa. "We figure out why he's still hanging around being an asshole, and then we take care of it."

"You mean like, pass on some final message to a loved one or return a stolen treasure or something?" Vanessa asks.

"No, that's what the Hardy Boys would do. What we're gonna do is destroy whatever's keeping it here."

"Usually it's the physical remains of the person the ghost used to be," Sam says. "If it's the physical remains, it's probably someone who lived and even more probably died in the house."

"Then there are ghosts that are attached to some object. So this ghost could be using something in the house like a genie uses a bottle. Either way, you either destroy whatever's left of the body, or you destroy the thing."

"Something in the house?" Vanessa says, skeptically. "You saw the house, right? The number of _somethings_ in it?"

"Yeah, well, that's going to be a problem. Unless you're okay with burning the whole damn place to the ground. Sammy's got objections to that plan."

Vanessa looks at Sam and they both roll their eyes. The gesture is not lost on Dean. "Figured you'd take his side," he mutters around a mouthful of pancakes.

"Yeah, well, that's 'cause you're not an idiot," Vanessa says. Dean raises an eyebrow at her use of his phrase from the night before, and then laughs.

"So," Vanessa continues, "how do we figure out who it is or what it's attached to or whatever?"

"There's a county historical society. I'll head over there when it opens and see what I can learn about the house, anything like a murder or a suicide that happened there, anyone who died there, any local stories attached to it," Sam says.

"And while Sammy's off doing that, you and I will see what we can find in the house," Dean says.

"Is that safe?"

"Relax, sweetheart. You'll be with an expert."

Sam jumps in with what he hopes will be a more reassuring explanation. "And from what you said, this ghost does its thing at night. You should be okay during the day, and Dean'll know what to do if anything happens. We'll see where we are at sundown."

Vanessa takes a deep breath, and then finishes what's left in her coffee cup. "Let's go ghost hunting, then."

X

As they drive back to the house, Vanessa tells Sam what little she knows about the history of the place. The original house had been built in the 1840's, by a local family called Moss, big fish in a small town pond. People still call it the Old Moss Place, when she tells them where she was living.

The tower had been added in the 1920's by a grandson, or great-grandson, of the original owners. His name was Henry, and apparently he came back from World War I more than a little crazy. People here – in the post office, the DMV, the grocery store – were all still talking about Henry Moss and his tower. Professor Hudson's aunt and uncle were named Arnold and Delilah Young, and they bought the place from Henry's niece in the late 1960's or early 1970's.

It's not a lot, but it's enough to fake a genealogy inquiry.

The house is quiet, though the front hall looks like a storm blew through and HARLOT is still emblazoned on the wall.

Vanessa, who is wearing the Furman shirt she put on yesterday, goes to take a very quick shower and change clothes. Sam and Dean make a cursory sweep of the rest of the house, but don't find anything.

When they get back to the kitchen, Vanessa is making more coffee. While Sam waits for the Historical Society to open, Dean goes over the ABCs of ghost hunting with Vanessa. Sam would actually love to have a picture of it. There's a chalkboard on the wall in the kitchen and Dean erases Vanessa's shopping list to write his own list of things to look for.

_1. Any human remains – bones, hair, teeth, weird organs in jars (don't ask)_

2. Weirdass symbols (hoodoo, voodoo, etc.) and inscriptions (Latin, Greek, languages you didn't know existed)

3. Creepy as fuck portraits (especially of little girls)

4. Anything else that looks freaky (it's like porn, you'll know it when you see it)

Sam leaves as Dean is explaining EMF and how to use his homemade, jerry-rigged reader.

Vanessa's ex-fiancé seems to be alive and well in South Carolina, which means finding a story about the house involving something lurid and likely to have caused a haunting is their best hope of getting a quick solution to the problem. In some ways, it's encouraging to know that an apparently crazy person lived there for forty years. Crazy people and ghosts can go together like peanut butter and chocolate.

The county historical society is in the next town over. Sam arrives just after it opens, with an earnest smile and a story about trying to find an ancestor named Lewis Moss, who he thinks might be related to the local Mosses. He is hoping this will be enough to get him pointed to information on the house and left alone.

And it might have been, if he hadn't arrived at the same time as Miss June Moss, a talkative old lady who actually _is_ one of the local Mosses, and who wants to know everything about Sam's "people." Sam is careful not to contradict himself in the creation of his fake family history, because June might be old and little hard of hearing, but she is also clearly sharp as a tack.

On the plus side, there doesn't appear to be anything June doesn't know about the Moss family, or the house, and when he finally escapes after three hours, he has had a very thorough and gossipy history lesson. She spends an hour on Henry Moss alone, including an incredibly detailed account of the morning he was arrested for indecent exposure, when he relieved himself on the tree in front of the First Baptist Church, "and right as Sunday services were letting out."

June reluctantly admits that she doesn't know much about the Youngs, who bought the house from a cousin after Henry Moss died. And now she hears that there's a girl living up there as some kind of caretaker, and June hasn't met her yet, but she's supposed to be a real pretty thing. She writes out directions for him, in case he wants to see the old family home, even though June suspects that Sam is "Moss that grew on a different tree." Sam laughs, because June is clearly waiting for him to, and thanks her, and goes.

It's a fairly typical, if incredibly detailed, small town family history, and Sam doesn't hear anything that sounded especially like it would cause the haunting they have on their hands. He picks up a couple of pizzas on his way back, and follows June's directions, which save a good ten minutes over the route he had taken that morning.

Sam arrives at the Old Moss Place to find what looks like Herman Munster's yard sale. There's a ramshackle pile of oddities on the front lawn: the shrunken head Sam had seen yesterday, four or five prostatic limbs, an English lawyer's wig, some paintings, what he hopes is a wax figure and not an actual corpse of a man dressed like the Phantom of the Opera, and at the very top of the pile, Miss Badgersham in her wedding dress.

"Some wild stuff, isn't it?" Vanessa calls from the porch. She's holding the door open, and a moment later, Dean follows her out of the house, carrying a large box.

It's full of small framed pictures, many showing wreaths, one or two featuring what look like tombs, all worked in golds and browns. At first, Sam thinks it's just some kind of embroidery. And then he looks more closely. "Is that _hair_?"

"Yep." Dean shudders and adds the box to the pile in the yard.

"It was a memorial practice, especially before photographs were easily taken. Or something you'd do to commemorate someone or something – you might collect hair from everyone in a church, for example, and make a wreath. Hair jewelry was common, too." Vanessa looks into the box. "Some of these are really amazing, and it just kind of breaks my art-history-major heart that we're going to set them on fire."

"They're gross," Dean says. He nods toward the pizza boxes. "Is that lunch?" At Vanessa's amusement over the juxtaposition of these two sentiments, Dean adds, "Freaky ass morning or not, a man's got to eat."

Vanessa takes the boxes from Sam. "I'll go get plates and drinks and stuff," she says. "See y'all inside."

Dean waits until the door has closed behind her. "You find anything?"

Sam shakes his head. "I heard the whole damn history of this house and the Moss family, and nothing. No red flags, no mysterious deaths, no disappearances, no murders, no suicides. If there were a ghost story related to this family, the woman I met this morning would have told it to me. In great and gory detail. I'd say it's something the Youngs brought in. What did you find?"

Dean waves a hand at the pile beside them. "Too much. All this hair crap, a couple of human skulls in a box, a few books that sure as hell don't look like they came from the local library, and my personal favorite, this," Dean says, pulling a huge framed picture from the pile.

It's a portrait of the most sinister and disturbing clown Sam has ever seen, and it's all he can do to keep from shuddering. "Thanks for that," he says, a split second after he should have, if it wasn't bothering him.

Point to Dean, then.

"You're welcome, Sammy." He throws the portrait back onto the pile. "Seriously, man, all this shit comes from three rooms."

Sam looks again at the pile. "That's only three rooms?"

"Well, we made a quick pass through the whole house, but as far as in-depth searching, yeah, just the three rooms."

"Three rooms," Sam says again.

"Yeah. I was really hoping you were going to show up with a murder and a ghost story, dude."

"EMF?"

"All over the place. Kinda useless. House is wired, after all."

"Great," Sam says. "So what's the plan?"

"Go eat lunch," Dean says. "Split up, hit as many rooms as we can hit by four or five o'clock. And then it's bonfire time. And then we'll put salt down around the kitchen and her room, to have a safe space to retreat to, and then we'll see if any ghosts turn up once the sun's down."

"That's our plan? Hope for the best?"

"We have no idea what we're looking for, Sammy. I can ID and burn the most obvious stuff, but without knowing who the hell is haunting this place . . . we need more info, or it's shot in the dark time."

"Yeah," Sam says. "How's Vanessa doing?"

"Good, for an amateur. She doesn't seem too freaked, though I think part of that is that she's mad, but, hey, I'll take mad over scared any day. And she's not giving me too much grief over what we're torching."

The afternoon passes in the same fashion as Dean's description of the morning. They don't come anywhere near to finishing all the rooms – the house is just too big and too full of stuff.

Dean is erring on the side of caution, and that's not a sentence Sam gets to use very often. If it looks like it might be harboring a ghost or, Sam suspects, if Dean just thinks it looks funny, out it goes.

That explains the point he sees added to Dean's list from the morning, written at the bottom of the chalkboard in handwriting that isn't his brother's and therefore must be Vanessa's.

_5. Anything Dean says goes, no matter what its cultural, historical, or monetary value is (no exceptions)_

Late in the afternoon, Dean appears in the doorway of the room Sam and Vanessa are searching. "Sun's starting to go down," he says.

"Time for the Bonfire of the Inanities?" Vanessa asks.

"The what?" Dean asks.

"Nothing," Vanessa says, and Sam smiles to let her know that he, at least, got the joke.

Out in the yard, Dean throws gasoline on the fire, while Sam throws salt. Dean gives Vanessa the honor of setting the whole pile alight.

Vanessa takes the lighter from him, looks at it for a moment, and then hands it back to him. "I can't. I just . . . I can't."

Dean shrugs, flicks the lighter, and throws it at the badger bride. Miss Badgersham's dress catches fire easily, and of course it _would_, Sam thinks, it's straight out of the book.

They all watch for a moment, and then Sam asks Vanessa for help laying down the salt lines in her room and the kitchen. They leave Dean to make sure they don't burn down the whole county.

"It bothers you, doesn't it? Burning all that stuff."

"You mean aside from the smell?" she asks.

Sam thinks about letting it go with her joke, but then says, "Yeah, aside from the smell."

Vanessa runs her hand along the edge of the kitchen table for a moment, before she answers. "Not all of it. That clown painting freaked me out. But some of it, yeah. I studied art history, Sam, and some of that stuff is art. And we're burning it on speculation. We don't actually know that any of that is what the ghost is hanging onto. I get that getting attacked by a ghost is worse than burning a couple of hair pictures, but . . . yeah, it bothers me." She gives him a slight smile. "And I feel kind of sorry for poor Miss Badgersham."

"I'm sorry," Sam says.

Vanessa shakes her head, and then says briskly, "Anyway, salt lines? These are to keep the ghost out of my kitchen and my bedroom, right? Both of which I'm very much in favor of, but the way."

"Yeah. And to give us a place to retreat to, if . . ."

"If the problem object isn't in your brother's bonfire?"

"That's the general idea."

"And if whatever we're looking for actually is in the kitchen?"

"Well, then, we can get out and it can't," Sam says. That actually wouldn't be bad. There's a lot less to go through in these two rooms than in the rest of the house.

Odds are hardly in their favor, but weirder things have happened.

Sam would know.

They put salt around her room first, and then the bathroom, before moving to the kitchen.

"So you've been doing this since high school?" Vanessa asks, from the other side of the kitchen.

Sam looks up from the salt line he's putting around the baseboards. "Longer," he says. "All my life, really."

"Why?" Vanessa asks. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm really glad you're here and you know what to do, but . . . why?"

Because someone has to. Because maybe it's the only chance he has to change whatever unknown plan a yellow-eyed demon has for him. Because he tried running, and he couldn't get away from it. Because of Jess. Because of the mother he didn't know. Because of the _father_ he didn't know. Because of his brother.

Because it's the family business.

"Sam?"

"Sorry," he says, wondering how long he let her question hang unanswered. Probably not as long as he thinks he did. He shrugs. "It's just one of those things. You know, if you're a Barrymore, you act. If you're a Manning, you play football. If you're a Winchester, you hunt."

"Simple as that, huh?"

_Not even close._ "More or less."

"You missed a spot," Dean says, coming into the kitchen and pointing to the far corner.

Sam looks automatically, even though he knows the lines are complete around the perimeter. Dean laughs, and Sam flips him off.

Vanessa shakes her head and mutters, "Boys," before going to the refrigerator and getting three bottles of beer.

Dean pulls one of the chairs out from the table, turns it around, and straddles it. "Game plan time," he says. And, as Vanessa sets one of the beers in front of him, "Thanks."

Sam and Vanessa opt to sit a little more conventionally.

"If we're lucky," Sam says, "whatever the ghost was hanging onto just burned up in the front yard."

"What are the odds that we're lucky?" Vanessa asks.

Sam and Dean exchange looks across the table. It would be nice to be able to assure her that things are taken care of, but hardly honest. And while they might be more than willing to lie, cheat, and con when they need to, there are certain things you have to tell the truth about.

"Hard to say," Dean says. "We just toasted a lot of likely candidates. But this is us we're talking about and, well, luck ain't always on our side, sweetheart."

"All we know about this ghost is that it's here, and it's mad, and . . ." Sam trails off.

"And it thinks I'm a harlot," Vanessa finishes, drily.

"Ghosts have crap taste," Dean says. "And they're assholes."

"Besides, maybe we're wrong, and it thinks Dean is the harlot," Sam adds.

Vanessa gives them both a small smile of thanks.

"So," Sam says, "if we didn't find whatever it is we're looking for, then we need more information. Who the ghost was, namely, which might tell us what it's hanging onto. And then we'll have a better idea of what to look for."

"Which means we're basically waiting for the sun to go down," Dean says. "Since this seems to be a night time only ghost."

"And then we'll try to get the ghost to show itself, or do something else to give itself away," Sam says.

"And how likely is this plan to get us all killed?" Vanessa asks.

"Nothing's going to happen to you," Dean says. "And we're outta here as soon as we have something to go on."

Vanessa nods. "Okay," she says.

But she doesn't really sound okay. Brave, and like she'll be able to handle it, but not okay.

Sam is looking for something reassuring to say when Dean flashes Vanessa a grin. "Would I lie to you?"

"Do you really want me to answer that?" Vanessa asks. But she seems closer to okay, now, at least a little. She stands. "I'm going to go pack some stuff, in case we wind up back at the It'll Do tonight. I think staying there will be slightly more comfortable if I have a change of clothes. And a toothbrush. And stuff like that."

"Make sure you remember that soap that smells like flowers," Dean tells her. "Sammy likes that one." Vanessa laughs and waves off this suggestion as she heads back into her bedroom, stepping carefully over the salt lines on either side of the door before closing it behind her.

It shouldn't be a surprise that Dean and Vanessa are getting along. He remembers Vanessa as getting along with just about everyone it high school. And if there is one group of people Dean has never had any trouble talking to, it's pretty girls. And he left them here all morning to work together. So it's not a surprise. Hell, he knew it would happen.

Sam finds that he resents it a little, anyway. Just a little. And completely irrationally. She's a girl he was kind of friends with five years ago. That's all.

But she was _his_ kind-of-friend, five years ago. Not Dean's.

Dean gets up for another beer, turns to offer Sam one, and stops. "You okay, dude?"

"Yeah," Sam says. "Look, do you think we should go ahead and clear her out? It'd be safer that way. Civilians on hunts and all."

"Yeah," Dean says, "but we don't know if we need her."

"To provoke the ghost, you mean," Sam says. "To use as bait."

"You got another option, here, Sammy, I'd love to hear it. You just want to keep burning piles of random shit till we manage to burn the right thing? She's smart, she'll be with us, and if the thing shows up, she'll be three feet from the kitchen, which should be safe behind the salt. And then it's out the back door and gone." Dean opens his beer. "Besides, I don't think she'd go for it if we tried to make her leave now."

It's fair. And objectively, it makes a lot of sense. But . . .

"I still don't like it," Sam says.

He's waiting for Dean to tell him to chill or call him a girl. But Dean just glances over at the door to Vanessa's room, and then says, "I don't, either."

X

It's not hard to fill the hour until the sun goes down. They put Vanessa's bag in the trunk of the car, and rake through the ashes of the Bonfire of the Inanities, making sure everything is completely destroyed and the fire is out. They eat what's left of the pizza.

There's not a lot of talk. Vanessa goes to make one last pass through her room, to make sure she's packed everything she wants to have packed. Sam looks at his watch, and looks up to see that something has shifted in his brother's expression. "It's time," Sam says.

"Yeah." Dean stands, and stretches his shoulders and his neck for a moment, then says, "You get the girl, I'll get the guns."

Vanessa doesn't so much as bat an eye about the shotguns, so Sam supposes that was one of the things Dean covered in the ways and means of ghost hunting that morning. And any doubts he had about that vanish when Vanessa lifts an iron fireplace poker from the corner of the front hall. She holds it like a sword. Or rather, she holds it like a girl who has only ever seen swords used in movies thinks she's supposed to hold a sword, at an angle, in front of her chest.

"I'm not really a gun girl," she tells Sam.

"I didn't really have you figured for one," he tells her.

"Now what?" she asks.

"Now we wait," Dean says, moving the curtain to look outside. "Sun's down."

And they wait. Ten minutes tick by on the grandfather clock in the hall, and then fifteen.

"Maybe we got whatever it was that we needed to get," Vanessa says, optimistically.

"One way to find out," Dean says. "Sammy, kiss her."

"What?" Sam says, horrified, and damn it, he can feel himself blushing. "No."

"Fine," Dean says, "then I'll kiss her."

"_No_," Sam says. He doesn't quite dare look over at Vanessa. Leave it to Dean to reduce him to feeling like a middle schooler at his first dance in the middle of a freakin' hunt.

"Vanessa, why don't you just pinch Sammy's ass and see if we can get this party started," Dean says.

"Dean, would you cut it out?"

"Oh, for Christ's sake," Vanessa says. She lowers the fireplace poker, puts one arm around Sam's neck, stands up on her tiptoes and kisses him full on the mouth.

The reaction is instantaneous. The temperature in the hallway plummets, the lights start to flicker, and a plaster statue of an eagle on the hall table launches itself at Sam and Vanessa.

Sam turns them both away, and the eagle smashes into the wall behind them.

"Looks like it's still here," Sam says.

"You think, Einstein?" Dean snaps.

Vanessa's taken one step away from Sam, shifting her grip on the fireplace poker, eyes fixed on the opposite wall. "Um, Sam? Dean?"

Sam turns around. Above the HARLOT, another word is writing itself. R-E-P-

"'Repent'?" Dean says. "Okay, now this thing is just pissing me off."

The lights start to flicker faster, and a wind blows through the room.

"Get her the hell behind the salt," Dean says, bringing his shotgun up, eyes searching the room.

"Come on," Sam says, taking Vanessa's arm just above the elbow to guide her into the safety of the kitchen.

In retrospect, maybe touching her wasn't the greatest idea he could have had in this situation. Or maybe the ghost would have gotten that mad regardless.

It doesn't waste energy on little chairs or statues or badgers this time. It's the grandfather clock that slides fast across the floor toward them.

"Sammy!"

Sam pushes a startled Vanessa out of the way, sending her all but sprawling into the kitchen, and catches the brunt of the clock's force down his right side. The glass over the clock's face and pendulum shatters against his shoulder and hip, and leaves a half dozen cuts on his right hand and newly healed wrist.

He never thought he'd miss that damned cast.

"Sammy?" Dean says, again, though it's an inquiry this time and not a warning.

"I'm okay," he says. "Just kind of stuck here for the moment."

"I fucking hate it when they start throwing furniture around. It's cheating," Dean says, as he pushes the clock over with a splintering crash and a clang of its chimes and weights.

Sam's just glad the ghost stopped with throwing it. More often than not, they follow that up with holding it in place.

Except that having a ghost break off on the middle of an attack isn't always a good thing. Because if you didn't do something to make it stop (and in this case they haven't), then it probably only stopped attacking you because it found something else to do.

Sam looks at the doorway to the kitchen, where Vanessa's stumble across the threshold has broken the salt line.

"Shit," Dean says, just as there's the dull clank and skitter of something metal hitting a tiled floor and skidding, followed by a short scream and then a splash in the kitchen.

"_Shit_," Dean says again.

The ghost, it seems, has finally materialized. And it has Vanessa by the hair, holding her head under the water in the kitchen sink.

The ghost pulls her head up. Vanessa appears to catch about a half a breath before the ghost shoved her back under the surface of the water.

Dean fires almost before Sam has registered that his own gun is still out in the hall where he dropped it when he got hit by the clock. The ghost flashes out of view, but that doesn't necessarily buy them more than a couple of seconds. Vanessa manages to get her head out of the water, but she's coughing and sputtering and clinging to the edge of the counter.

Sam doesn't come close to reaching the sink before the ghost reappears, pushing Vanessa back into the water.

"Move," Dean yells, and Sam steps out of the path of his shot, still moving toward Vanessa. The ghost vanishes again, but now they're weaponless while Dean reloads.

"Can you walk?" Sam asks Vanessa, and she manages to nod. He puts one arm across her shoulders and starts to guide her to the back door.

The ghost reappears before they've gone five feet, blocking their exit route.

"Not ready," Dean says, still reloading the shotgun.

Sam lets go of Vanessa, reaching for the only thing he can see that might work as a weapon, hanging from the pot rack suspended above them. He swings the cast iron skillet through the ghost and it vanishes for the third time.

"I've got you covered," Dean says. "Go."

Sam drops the skillet, leaving ghost disruption to Dean, and focuses on getting a now fairly dazed-looking Vanessa out of the house. He grabs her shoulder, puts his arm across her back, and half-steers, half-propels her out of the kitchen door and into the side yard. Behind them, Dean fires again, and then once more as he follows them out of the house.

"Let's get out of here," Dean says, because they have no way of knowing that they're safe in the yard, or just how far the ghost can pursue them.

Sam keeps his arm across Vanessa's shoulders, but she's moving under her own power before they reach the Impala, though still coughing up dish water. Sam follows her into the back seat. It's one fewer door to open and close before they can leave. As it is, Dean has the car in motion before Sam gets the door closed behind them.

Vanessa finally stops coughing as they reach the end of the driveway.

"You okay?" Dean asks, looking at her in the rear view mirror.

"I think so," she says. "My throat's a little sore, and I'm soaking wet, and I smell like Palmolive, but I'm okay."

Sam pulls his jacket off, shakes it slightly in the hopes of getting rid of any glass shards, and then hands it to her.

"Thanks."

"Nice move with the frying pan, there, Emeril," Dean says.

Sam resists for a beat, maybe two, before he says, "Bam."

Vanessa laughs, and given what a bad joke it was, Sam is guessing she's more shaken than she's trying to let on. It stops a little short of actually sounding like hysteria, but not by much.

"You sure you're okay?" he asks, as Dean turns back onto the highway.

"I'm close enough," Vanessa says. "Though I definitely like ghosts better when they're figments of my imagination."

Sam smiles at her. "Yeah, I can see that."

"It's less likely to get you half-drowned, at any rate."

They drive in silence for a few minutes, and then Vanessa clears her throat. "Look, I'm just going to go ahead and say it, because someone has to," she says, and then pauses before actually going ahead and saying it.

"That was a fucking nun."


	3. Chapter 3

They postpone further discussion without actually discussing the postponement. Rooms 13 and 14 are waiting for them at the It'll Do Motel. They'll get back to talking about the ghost once everyone's had a chance to recover.

And, yeah, "everyone" mostly means Vanessa, who both got the worst of their encounter and isn't used to this sort of thing.

She goes to take a shower, Dean goes out to grab burgers, and Sam decides this is a good night for being overly cautious and lays salt lines down around both rooms.

He's just about finished with Vanessa's room, when she opens the door to the bathroom, now dressed in clean dry clothes, and surrounded by a cloud of flower-scented steam.

She stands in the doorway and watches him work. "Oh, I bet motel maids just love the two of you," she says.

"We tip well," Sam says. "Are you feeling any better?"

"Some," she says. "I mean, I think Sister Mary Panties-in-a-Twist just tried to baptize me to death in a kitchen sink, but aside from that . . ."

"We're going to take care of that," Sam says. "I promise."

"I know." Vanessa hesitates, and then says, "I'm really sorry."

Sam looks at her in genuine surprise. "For what?"

"Messing up that line of salt in the kitchen. That's how the ghost got across it, right?"

Sam comes over to where she's standing. "Hey, that wasn't your fault, Vanessa," he says. "I'm the one who pushed you."

"Well, it certainly wasn't your fault," she says.

"It wasn't really anybody's fault. It was just one of those things that happen. Okay?"

Vanessa nods. "How's your hand?" she asks.

Sam looks down at the cuts on his right hand. He had half-forgotten about them until she mentioned them. "It's fine," he says. "This is pretty minor for us."

"I'll try to find that reassuring," she tells him. "Where's Dean?"

"He went out to pick up burgers."

"I kind of think I'd throw up if I tried to eat anything right now," Vanessa says.

"Yeah, well, I'm pretty sure Dean got the stomach intended for a goat. He can always take up the slack on the burgers if one of us falls behind." He holds up the can of salt and points to the bathroom behind her. "I kind of need to . . ."

"Oh, right. Sorry," Vanessa says, moving out of the doorway. "Are you expecting her to show up here?"

"Not really," he says. "Just being extra cautious."

"Extra cautious is good," she says, and sits cross-legged on one of the beds.

She's still sitting there, staring at nothing, when Sam finishes with the bathroom. "Are you sure you're okay, Vanessa?"

She smiles weakly. "I'm working really hard here at not completely freaking out on you, Sam. It would kind of help a lot if you'd stop asking that."

"I'm sorry." There's a moment of awkward silence, and then Sam says, "So, who do you think is going to win the Stanley Cup this year?"

Vanessa blinks, twice, and stares at him, head tilted to the side. "What?"

"As something else to talk about. Who do you think is going to win the Stanley Cup this year?"

"Um," Vanessa says. "Well, is that football or baseball?"

"Hockey," Sam says, just before Vanessa starts to laugh and he realizes he's been had.

He's about to reply when he hears the door open in the adjoining room and instead holds a hand up for quiet. And yeah, it's probably Dean, but this is not a night for taking chances. Very few nights are, for them. Sam has reached the connecting door and half-drawn his gun before he hears Dean call, "Sammy?" from the other room.

"In here," Sam says, easing the 9mm back into place.

"You know, they make holsters for those," Vanessa says. "I'm hardly the expert, but I think they're generally considered both safer and more secure than waistbands."

"More obvious, too, sweetheart," Dean says, dropping three bags onto the bed next to her and holding out the tray of drinks.

"Do guns work on ghosts?" she asks, taking one of the fast food cups. "I mean, are those loaded with salt, too?"

"We don't just deal with ghosts. There's other stuff, too," Sam says, moving the bags off Vanessa's bed and onto the dresser. She's looking a little green, and the smell of fried grease probably isn't helping. "Do you want anything else?"

She shakes her head. "Not right now. Just the Coke is good."

"Suit yourself," Dean says.

"Do I even want to ask what else is out there?" Vanessa asks. "Other than ghosts?"

"A whole lot of weird shit you don't have to worry about tonight," Dean says. "And, odds are, probably not ever." He flops onto the other bed with a double cheeseburger and onion rings. There's no attempt at a segue, just, "All right, about this ghost bitch. What do we know?"

Sam finds his own dinner, pushes the rest of the bags and their contents aside, and leans back against the dresser. "She's a nun," Sam says.

"And I'm pretty sure she tried to kill me," Vanessa says. "Which . . . look, why is she trying to kill me? I mean, why me specifically?"

"Well, that's the $64,000 question," Dean says.

"I'm _Catholic_," Vanessa continues, indignantly. "My confirmation name was Zita."

"_Zita_?" Dean says. "Isn't that, like, some kind of noodle?"

"That's zi_ti_. This is Zi_ta_. She's the patron saint of lost keys; I figured she was a good one to have in my corner. And she's an incorruptible, you know, one of the saints whose bodies don't decompose when they die, which I thought was cool, when I was twelve. Anyway, the point is, nuns are supposed to be on my side," Vanessa says. "So why is this one trying to kill me?"

"We may never know," Sam says. "Ghosts are usually born from violent deaths, and they're all a little different in what they can do and how they go about doing it. This one seems to be upset that you've got male company, since she got a lot more active when we showed up. Maybe she's trying to make you live like a nun."

"Like I need any help with that," Vanessa mutters. Dean raises an eyebrow, but stops short of commenting, which Sam is grateful for.

"Anyway," Dean says. "We don't really care what she wants, so long as we can get rid of her. So, let's figure out why she's here, or what she's holding onto. Sammy, is there any record that the house used to be a . . . you know, a whatcamacallit? One of those places where they store nuns?"

"Convents," Sam says, "and no."

"So odds are it's something in the house."

"Odds were always that it was something in the house." One of the many, many, _many_ somethings in the house.

"So what kind of crap does a nun have?" Dean asks.

"Well, not much, honestly," Vanessa says, picking at a threadbare place on the bedspread in front of her. "Nuns don't have a lot of stuff. They give it up. It's the whole poverty thing."

"Poverty?" Dean asks.

"Chastity, obedience, and poverty. The vows a nun takes, when she becomes a nun."

"I knew there was a reason I wasn't a nun," Dean says, before shoving an entire onion ring into his mouth.

"I can think of a couple of others," Sam says, before turning back to Vanessa. "And a ghost is usually tied to some kind of corporeal remains. Like, last year, we ran into a ghost whose hair had been used to make the hair on a doll. And so she was tied to the doll. When we destroyed the doll—"

"When _I_ destroyed the doll," Dean corrects.

"—then the ghost went away," Vanessa guesses.

"Right," Sam says.

Vanessa stands up, and Sam moves the fast food bags over to where they will easier for her to reach. She walks past both him and dinner, though, over to the door. For a second, Sam thinks she's going to leave, but then she turns around, and around again, pacing the length of the motel room.

"So, basically, we're looking for a piece of a nun," Dean says, and then pauses. "Okay, I think that came out really wrong."

"Oh, it did," Sam tells him.

Vanessa stops pacing. "St. Zita is an incorruptible," she says, again. "You can go see her body in Lucca, Italy. It's on display in a church."

"Okay," Sam says slowly, trying to keep his tone soothing. Because the sudden return to St. Zita has him wondering if maybe the stress has gotten to her.

"Saints' bodies, or parts of their bodies, have been venerated in the Catholic church for centuries," Vanessa says. "Maybe we're looking for a reliquary."

"A rel-a-what?" Dean asks.

"Reliquary," Vanessa repeats, and then explains before Sam has to dredge up what little he remembers about them from his own art history class at Stanford. "They were created as devotional objects, but they're also collected as works of art now. They hold a relic, something associated with a saint or another holy figure."

"And when you say 'something,' you mean what, exactly?" Dean sounds like he could guess, but he's hoping that he's wrong.

"Bones are pretty common, right?" Sam asks, and watches Dean's face shift into an expression of resigned disgust.

"Yes," Vanessa says, starting to pace again. "But also scraps of clothing, hair, teeth, blood. Things like a piece of the cross they crucified Jesus on. I think there are even some that were supposed to have vials of the Virgin Mary's breast milk."

"Okay, that's just gross," Dean says, and takes another large bite of his hamburger.

"_Gross_ is not exactly new and different for us, Dean," Sam says. He hesitates, for a second, and then says carefully, "Look, Vanessa, I'm not saying it's not a good theory, it's just . . . didn't they tend to be big gold boxes covered in jewels and shaped like arms and heads?"

"Some of the medieval ones were shaped like arms or other body parts, yes, and they tended to be made of out gold or silver. But not always. They weren't always big, and some were just shaped like boxes or chests." She looks over at Dean. "Chests like trunks, not chests like boobs."

"No shit," Dean says.

Vanessa smiles something like an apology at him before she continues. "Anyway, the Youngs seem to have picked up a lot of stuff from Europe. They could have brought one home at some point," Vanessa says.

"So, how come you know so much about this crap?" Dean asks. "Saint boxes and shit?"

"Dean, I'm an art history major who grew up Catholic. I may not know much about ghosts or guns, but I am definitely the go to girl on 'saint boxes.'"

"And that's another thing," Dean says. "Aren't saints supposed to be, you know, nice?"

"So we're assuming I'm right about what we're looking for?" Vanessa asks, and she sounds pleased.

"For now, anyway," Dean says.

"Maybe she's mad because the reliquary isn't being shown the proper respect. It's supposed to be in church, right?" Sam says, "And instead it's been taken as a collectible."

"We've dealt with ghosts pissed off by less," Dean says.

"Or she might not have been a saint to begin with," Vanessa says. "There was a lot of demand for the remains of saints. There was some fraud. There were probably enough pieces of the 'true cross' floating around Europe to build a battleship. Never mind the people claiming to have Mary's breast milk or Jesus' foreskin from his circumcision."

Dean drops the onion ring he's holding back into the bag. "You're doing that on purpose, aren't you?" Dean asks Vanessa. "Naming the weirdest, grossest, creepiest things you can think of about all this."

"Maybe," Vanessa admits, swiping two of Dean's onion rings as she goes past the bed.

"Let's keep to bones, and not all that other stuff," Dean says.

Vanessa almost smirks. "All I'm saying is that, even if it is a reliquary, there's no guarantee that the bones inside aren't just some bones that were convenient. Either because there was fraud from the beginning, or because somewhere over the years, the original bones got lost and these were used to replace them. This could just be some poor nun who got . . . repackaged. Which would annoy me, if I were dead, I think. I know it's just a theory, but if you're looking for the remains of a nun at an old farmhouse in rural Virginia, then this is my best guess."

"Well, we've gone with odder theories," Sam says.

"Any number of times," Dean says. He gets up, crosses to the dresser and picks up the burger Vanessa isn't eating. "Okay," he says, "tomorrow we'll go back, check things out, and then see if we can't find a piece of a nun in a gold box that might or might not be shaped like an arm." He takes a bite of the burger. "And if that's not the strangest thing I've ever said, it's probably in the top five."

X

"Sammy?" Dean says, standing on the front porch of the house the next morning. He's turned the doorknob, but hasn't opened the door yet.

"What's wrong?" Sam asks.

"Door's not opening."

"The ghost?"

"Don't know. Let's try the door into the kitchen. Keep an eye on . . ." Dean doesn't have to finish the thought. Sam moves to be between Vanessa and the house as they circle around to the back door.

The screen door is closed, but the main door is still standing open from when they fled the night before. The smell hits them even before they reach it.

"It smells like the morning after a frat party," Vanessa says.

She's right. It smells like spilled drinks and food that's been sitting out. And once they're in the kitchen, it's easy to see why.

"Looks like someone threw a tantrum after we left," Dean says.

Dean has, as ever, a gift for understatement. The kitchen is an unholy mess. The refrigerator is lying on its side, its contents strewn across the room. And if something was breakable, the ghost seems to have broken it. The floor is littered with shattered plates and broken glasses. And the ghost has smashed bottles and jars containing everything from juice and beer to pickles and peanut butter.

Across the chalkboard, over top of Dean's To Be Destroyed list, the word JEZEBEL has been written over and over and over.

Vanessa stands in the middle of the kitchen, turning slowly and taking it all in.

"Vanessa?" Sam asks. He's about to ask if she's okay, but he remembers her comment from the night before.

Anyway, a second later, it's clear that she's not so much upset as she is _furious_.

Vanessa puts her hands on her hips and looks toward the rest of the house. "Okay, listen up, Sister Whoever You Are," Vanessa says, apparently to the currently absent ghost. "I don't know what the hell your problem is, but I will damn well screw anyone I damn well want to screw, and if it's one of these guys, or hell, if it's _both_ of them, and at the _same damn time_, I will do it. Whether you like it or not. So there."

And then she looks over at Sam and Dean. "You know I'm not actually going to sleep with either one of you, right? I just want to make it clear that I'm not sleeping with you because I don't want to, not because she told me not to."

Sam can feel himself blushing again, even though there's no good reason for it. Dean, however, grins at her. "Let's not many any hasty decisions, here," he tells her.

"Sorry," she says to Sam. "I just really don't like this bitch."

"Understandable," he says. "Um, well, the good news is that it looks like the salt line between your room and the kitchen held up."

The contrast is actually almost comical. Just on the other side of the ruin in the kitchen, Vanessa's bed is neatly made and her pictures are lined up across the top of her dresser.

"I guess we should see how the rest of the house looks," Sam says.

"Well," Dean says, as they cross into the front hall, "I think I know why we couldn't get the door open."

Every piece of furniture in the hall, except for the wrought iron coat rack, is piled up against the door.

"I guess you didn't put your back into it," Vanessa says, not quite selling the light tone she seems to aiming for, and for her all defiance a moment ago, Sam thinks she's probably still working pretty hard at not freaking out on them.

Dean grins at her. "Baby, I always put my back into it."

Sam bites back the almost instinctive reaction to tell his brother to cut it out.

Vanessa, however, just lifts her eyebrows and says, "Yeah, I'll bet you do. It's all about leverage, right?"

"Physics 101," Dean tells her, and only his brother could put that kind of leer into the name of a college course.

But despite the fact that they've now been keeping this up for three days, neither of them seems to be taking the flirtation at all seriously. It's all being done with tongues firmly in their own cheeks, not each other's mouths. And given that they're standing in a room whose walls now say REPENT, HARLOT more times than Sam can count, and given Vanessa's outburst in the kitchen just now, Sam is fairly certain that Vanessa's flirting with Dean is mostly about saying _go to hell_ to the ghost. And he's also fairly certain that Dean's flirting with Vanessa is mostly about giving her a chance to say _go to hell_ to the ghost.

Anyway, neither of them seems to be bothered by it, so who is he to be offended on their behalf?

So Sam just rolls his eyes and asks, "Are you two trying to get us killed?"

But as he follows them through the house, listening to their back and forth, he can't help but think about the lengths he would have gone to in order to keep them from meeting five years ago. And not because he doesn't think Vanessa at eighteen would have been comfortable keeping up an easy flow of banter with Dean at twenty-two.

Or, at least, not _just_ because of that.

But because Vanessa was a part of the "normal" world – the one he got to pretend he belonged in when he was at school. The one he had planned to become a fulltime resident of as soon as high school was over and he could leave.

One of the many best laid plans of his life that had gone awry.

It's odd, too, to realize how much like second nature life in the world of the weird has gotten. A year ago, even six months after Jess died, this had all still felt temporary, more like an extended road trip down someone else's path than his life.

And now, following his brother and a girl who could have been voted queen of the "normal" prom through a house full of the oddest accumulation of stuff Sam has ever seen, haunted by a pissed off ghost of a _nun_, looking for damage caused by said ghost of a nun . . .

Well, this shouldn't feel right, or even _real_, but it does.

And the three years he spent away from this life are the times that feel like they happened to someone else.

"I think I'm going to go see if there's any chance the ghost left us a way to make coffee," Vanessa says, when they've once again reached the room at the top of the tower, and finished their search of the house.

"Do you want us to come with you?" Sam asks.

"I think it'll be okay," she says. "If I didn't get her attention with my little tirade in the kitchen, I'm pretty sure she's hibernating for the day. Or whatever the term is. And if I'm wrong, well, I can still scream when I need to."

Sam is starting to suspect Vanessa just knows when he and Dean need a moment to consult in private. They wait until they can't still hear her footsteps descending the tower staircase, and then Dean says, "What do you think, Sammy?"

It's hard to say. There are signs of disturbance throughout the house, though nothing like the kitchen and the front hall. But since those are just about the least likely rooms to actually hold whatever they were looking for, that probably has more to do with their location last night than the location of whatever's housing the ghost.

It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Only it's a really big haystack, and it might not even be a needle.

"The damn thing could be anywhere," Sam says, "and we don't even know what we're looking for. Not for sure."

"Well, not anywhere. We know it's not in the kitchen. The bitch attacked us in the hallway before the salt broke, so she wasn't in the kitchen when the sun went down. She's not in Vanessa's room, either. Of course, that's two down and something like seventy to go, but . . . Sammy? You even listing here?"

Sam is, but only sort of. Because Dean's right; they can eliminate the rooms blocked by salt when the ghost first attacked last night.

"It's not one big haystack," Sam says.

"Right," Dean says. "That clears it up. Dude, you off your meds?"

"The house," Sam says.

"Yeah, you're still not making any sense."

"We've been thinking about having to search the whole house," Sam says. "But what if we knew what room it was in? What if we lay salt lines down around every single room?"

"Then we wait till tonight, see what room the ghost is hanging out in –" Dean says.

"—then come back tomorrow and just search that one."

"And if we happen to find some gold C-3PO arm along the way—"

"—we torch the sucker," Sam concludes.

"It's a good plan, Sammy," Dean says. "Of course, we're going to need a metric fuckton of salt."

"Well, then it's a good thing we know a girl with a truck."

X

They do a blitz search of the house while Vanessa is off buying out the town's supply of rock salt. Sam is not surprised, though, when they don't find many likely candidates, since most of the obvious stuff went up in flames yesterday.

More importantly, they move things away from the walls of each room, as much as they can, to make room for the lines of salt. Everything has to be inside its room's lines, or this experiment isn't going to work.

They move the pile of furniture away from the front door. And they clear out the mess in the kitchen – righting the refrigerator, sweeping up broken glasses and plates, bottles and jars. Sam is a little surprised when the fridge starts up when they plug it back in.

There's nothing they can do about the writing in the hall, but Dean erases the Jezebels from the kitchen chalkboard.

Dean manages to find a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips and a package of Oreos that have survived the devastation in the pantry. Sam scrounges up a couple of plastic cups and fills them with water.

They've had worse lunches.

Much, much worse.

"We're going to have to take her into every room until we find it, you realize that, right?" Dean says.

"We'll take her right back out, though."

"You might have to kiss her a lot, Sammy. Think you can handle that?"

"Better me than you, man," Sam says. "Though, the ghost is pretty mad at this point. Vanessa's just being here will probably be enough, and even that might not be necessary."

"Maybe we should try to get her to stay at the motel."

"I don't really think she'll go along with that," Sam says.

"Go along with what?" Vanessa asks, coming into the kitchen with a bag from a Chinese restaurant in one hand and a six pack of beer in the other.

Dean shoves what's left of the chips to the far end of the table. "You are the best looking girl I have ever seen."

"I bet you say that to all the girls who show up with hot food and cold beer," Vanessa says, setting everything on the table. And then asks again, "Go along with what?"

"Staying in the motel tonight while Sam and I take care of things here," Dean says.

"Oh." Vanessa pauses for just a second in the middle of setting out white paper cartons and plastic forks. "No, I won't go along with that," she says.

And that's that.

"You cleaned up in here," Vanessa says. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Sam says.

"You know, if you fought ghosts with sugar instead of salt, I'd be on some list of suspected moonshiners now," Vanessa says.

"Did you have any trouble getting it?" Sam asks.

"No. People probably think that I'm the latest crazy person to live in the old Moss Place, but I have a truckload of salt waiting outside."

"Welcome to our world," Dean says, and helps himself to the carton of fried rice.

X

One of these days, Dean will surprise him and pick paper, but until then, rock beats scissors every time. Dean, therefore, gets to be the one to haul salt up to the room at the top of the tower.

Of course, that leaves Sam dealing with the first floor, which has the most rooms and the biggest rooms, which are also the rooms with the most crap in them. So he's not sure he can say he won so much as he might not have lost quite as badly. Vanessa spends the afternoon going from one to the other, squeezing around things like a grand piano with no legs and the giant cauldron, things that create passages and corners that are just a little too tight for Sam and Dean to get into.

They work as fast as they can, because February afternoons aren't all that long. They're cutting it close, to have time to both finish and check every wall and every corner to make sure they haven't missed anything. And they have to check, because the margin of error on hunting tends to be _don't screw up_. But when they're done, every room in the house is a ghost trap.

Vanessa drags them out to dinner, with the argument that it's better than just sitting around waiting for the sun to set, and that there's nothing to eat in the house, anyway. And since she's right, about both of those things, they go, Dean following her directions to what she calls the best restaurant in town.

Sam, who has lived in a lot of towns like this, and visited more, is expecting "the best restaurant in town" to be an Italian place with high prices, mediocre food, and low lighting, aimed at pre-prom dinners and anniversary dates. Instead they wind up on a side street at Tommy's, a little squat brick building with a neon sign and a pink plastic statue of a pig out front. Tommy's serves what Dean declares to be the best barbeque he's ever had, and a lot of it. The waitress's hair is a gravity-defying wonder, the soundtrack is pure twang, and the walls are covered with signed pictures of stock car drivers and local beauty queens.

The conversation is deliberately light. They don't talk about ghosts or hunting, and neither do they talk about Sam and Vanessa's high school days. She asks about the Impala, which Dean can go on about for however long you'll let him. Sam asks about her truck, which she tells them is named Warhol, and which was passed down to her when her father decided to buy a new one.

It's only when the place is closing up that they leave the waitress a hell of a tip for tying up her table for so long, and drive back to the house in the dark.

It's almost unnaturally quiet, when they get there. They stand for a minute in the yard, watching the windows, and then Dean opens the trunk and distributes flashlights and weapons – shotguns for him and Sam, and the iron fireplace poker for Vanessa.

Vanessa's eyes grow slightly wide at the sheer number of shells full of rock salt Dean hands to Sam. "I thought tonight was just –"

"Yeah," Sam says, quickly. "Yeah, we're just going to figure out what room the damn thing is in and then we're getting the hell out of there."

"Better safe than sorry, though," Dean says. "Ghosts can be real pains in the ass. So load up, Sammy."

The house is even quieter inside. There ought to be floorboards creaking and random taps from the old pipes and there aren't. Just the sounds of their footsteps and breathing.

Without discussing it, they fall into a sort of line, always keeping Vanessa in the middle, so that she is never in a room or a corridor without at least one of them.

There's nothing on the first floor, no cold spots, no ping on the EMF reader, no reaction to Dean's yelling, "Show yourself, you bitch!" even when he adds "Or we're going to third base!" (Sam is both grateful for his decision to go with the euphemism, and skeptical that the ghost will get the reference.)

They pause for a moment at the bottom of the staircase. "Next time, Sammy," Dean says, "we're checking out a haunted condo. Or better yet, like, a haunted tool shed."

"I'll see what I can do about that," Sam says.

"She has to be somewhere, right?" Vanessa asks, as they climb the steps to the second floor. "That's how it works?"

"Somewhere," Dean says. "Let's see what's behind door number one."

There's nothing in the first bedroom, or the second. But the moment Sam steps into the third one, he feels it. It is way too cold in here.

"I think we found her," he says, and Dean nods.

"All right, let's get out of here," Dean says, and leads the way back into the hallway.

Sam's not sure what Vanessa stumbles over on her way to the door, but she does. She doesn't fall, just has to take a second to right herself. And it's in that second that the door slams shut, with Sam and Vanessa on one side of it, and Dean on the other.

Vanessa looks at him for a second, horrified, and then tries to open the door. "It won't open," Vanessa says. "Sam, it won't open."

"Shit," Sam says, trying the door himself, and then taking the safety off the shotgun and bringing it up so he can fire when he has to.

"This is bad, right?" Vanessa asks, and then screams when there's a _bang_ from the other side of the door.

"That's just Dean," Sam says. "I'm sure he's trying to get the door open."

Or to beat it down.

"Will he be able to?"

"It's a long shot," Sam admits, as his phone rings. It's Dean, and not answering will be interpreted as _I'm being murdered by a ghost nun_, so Sam answers it.

"Sammy? You guys okay in there?"

"For now." He crosses the room to look at the windows, since the drop is probably a lot less likely to kill them than the ghost is.

"Windows?" Dean asks.

"Trying them now," Sam says. He picks up a heavy brass paperweight and throws it at one of the windows as hard as he can. A spider web of cracks appears across the glass, but the weight doesn't go through it, and it should have. "Looks like the ghost is keeping them closed."

"Shit. Okay, I'm going to keep trying to get the door open. Break the salt line in front of it, okay? Maybe she'll decide she wants to get out of there or something."

They both know the ghost won't. Or at least that she won't until she's done in here. She's been very clear about who her first choice of target is. But all Sam says is, "Okay. I gotta go, Dean. She could—"

"Yeah. You . . . well, you know."

Sam hangs up the phone, drops it back into his jacket pocket and looks up. "Vanessa, duck!" The ghost is behind her, its hands outstretched.

Vanessa ducks, and Sam fires.

"What the hell do we do now?" Vanessa asks, and there's another _bang_ from the door.

"Now we have to find it," Sam says.

"The ghost? Call me crazy, but I think we already did."

"No. Whatever it's attached to."

"Oh, right," says Vanessa. "Okay. Yeah. We can do that." She doesn't believe it, that's obvious. She has used one too variations on _okay_.

"Keep the poker handy, and start looking. You're the one who has the best chance of recognizing whatever it is," Sam tells her, in a firm tone that he hopes will help her stay calm and composed.

Because if she freaks out, they're screwed.

"What are you going to do?" Vanessa asks.

"Try to keep her off you."

Vanessa still looks less than completely confident about this plan, but it's the only one they've got, and so she starts opening drawers in a roll top desk by the door.

"I'm going to have to reload, after the next shot," Sam says.

"So I whack her with the poker if she shows up," Vanessa says. "Right?"

"Right."

"Sam?" she says, without looking up from the drawer.

"Yeah?"

She looks up at him. "If that happens, _when_ that happens . . . you better reload really fast."

Sam takes a second they don't really have to meet her eyes and nod. "I will."

She nods back, and then flinches when Sam fires at the ghost again. Vanessa brings the poker up and takes a step closer to Sam even before can tell her he's reloading the shotgun.

It continues in that vein for about five minutes. Vanessa searches frantically for the space of two shots – and this ghost regroups _fast_ – then stops to be the only line of defense while Sam reloads, and then repeat. And through it all, there's the steady bang bang _bang_ of Dean's trying to open or break down the door to the room.

And then the ghost apparently decides it's had enough of playing the duck in Sam's shooting gallery, and starts throwing things at them, instead.

He looks up from reloading the shotgun to see a dresser slide across the floor and slam Vanessa up against the wall. He can only see her head and the top of her shoulders over the top of it.

"Vanessa?"

"I'm okay. Ish."

"Hang on, I'll try to . . ." Sam pushes at the dresser as hard as he can, but it's not moving.

"Behind you."

Sam turns, bringing the shotgun up and firing just before the ghost can reach them.

Shit. They've got maybe fifteen seconds before this ghost bitch regroups again, and then only one shot before he'll have to reload.

Maybe he can try to move the salt, and make a ring around the dresser or something. But not in fifteen seconds.

"Over there," Vanessa says, and Sam turns again, to look at what she's nodding at, bringing the gun around to fire again, but there's no sign of the ghost.

"What?" he asks.

"Box. Top shelf. On the left."

Sam looks. He can just make out the shape of a box with a curving lid, like a treasure chest or a trunk. It looks black, and nothing like the golden arm he's been watching for all day.

"You think that's the thing?"

"Maybe," Vanessa says.

Still, it's not like they have a whole lot of other options presenting themselves, here.

Sam grabs a handful of the salt from the floor beside the dresser and checks his jacket pocket for his lighter. It's the only accelerant he's got with him, but there's paper on the desk Vanessa had been searching, and maybe he can use that. "Okay, as soon as she reappears, I'll shoot her and move as fast as I can."

"Okay," Vanessa says.

The ghost reappears, reaching for Vanessa again. Sam fires and is headed across the room to the box on the shelf before the ghost has even completely dissipated.

The box is silver, though tarnished to the point of blackness and pitted. He has no idea how Vanessa managed to see that from across the room. It's elaborately decorated with engravings and inscriptions, and he fumbles with the ornate clasp before finally opening it to reveal the three bones of a single human finger.

Yahtzee, as Dean would say.

Sam dumps the salt into the reliquary, then lights the crumpled sheet of paper he grabbed from the desk. He pries the lighter open and dumps its contents onto bones, and then drops in the burning scrap of paper.

He hears Vanessa make a sound midway between a gasp and a scream, and looks up just in time to see the ghost wink out of existence, blowing and swirling away like smoke from an extinguished candle.

"Are you all right?" he asks.

"I think so," Vanessa says. "That was the kind of vanishing that means it's not coming back, right?"

"Yeah. It's over."

And then, with an almighty crash, the door comes splintering off its hinges and falls into the room.

Dean stands in the doorway, holding the iron coat rack from the foyer. Sam is impressed, though it's also not really a surprise that Dean got something that would work as both a battering ram and a weapon against a ghost.

"You get it?" Dean asks.

Sam nods.

"Everybody okay?"

"Yeah," Sam says, dropping the lid back into place on the box. The fire, now that it's done its job, will die out without air in the metal box, and they won't have to worry about burning the house down. "Help me with the dresser, would you?" he says.

It's just a basic wooden five-drawer dresser, and there is no way it should be as heavy as it is. Fortunately, they don't have to move it far to give Vanessa enough space to wiggle out from behind it.

"Jesus, what the hell is in these drawers?" Dean asks.

Sam ignores him. "Are you all right?" he asks Vanessa again. "You're sure you're not hurt anywhere?"

"I'm all right enough," she says. "I think I'm going to have some pretty impressive bruises, but I don't think anything's broken or anything like that."

"Dude," Dean says, "check this out."

Sam and Vanessa both move to see what Dean has found in the drawers of the dresser.

"Are those what I think they are?" Vanessa asks.

"Rounds for a .45," Sam says. Boxes and boxes of them.

"It's an entire dresser full of ammo," Dean says. "You mind if we snag some of these?"

"Y'all knock yourselves out," Vanessa says.

X

As far back as Sam can remember, this has been part of the rhythm of his life – finish a job, or a visit with Bobby or someone like that, or a semester, and then pack the car and drive someplace new to start all over. Short trips, short stays, long drives, and unplanned detours. His life is and always has been one long road trip. And he doesn't know where he's going, except that he doubts this all ends at either Disney World or the Grand Canyon.

He'll have to worry about the destination someday, and maybe even someday soon, but for now, it's all trip, with stops along the way.

The past twenty-four hours have been about as close to a real rest as they ever get.

Burning the bones in the silver box seemed to have taken care of the problem, but they decided to hang around one more night just to make sure. And since that left them with a day to fill up, they'd helped Vanessa restock the kitchen and swept up at least some of the salt lines. Sam and Vanessa had taken bags and bags of broken odds and ends to the dump while Dean had painted the front hall with two coats of dark green paint to blot out the words the ghost left behind.

Vanessa had made another pasta dinner, one that they actually got to finish without ghostly interruption, and the night had been quiet.

Sam is willing to officially call this job over and done with.

He sets his duffle bag next to Dean's, closes the trunk, and leans back against the Impala to look up at the house.

It would be really easy to stay on this stop along the road for a little longer. Vanessa would let them stay, Sam knows, for however long they liked. And Dean would probably be all for taking a break and ignoring whatever destiny some demon has planned for Sam. And they wouldn't be bored; God knows there's enough here they could help Vanessa with.

But that's a bad idea. Hanging around Vanessa Foster is, and always will be, chasing after his past. And that past – the one where Sam Winchester just got to be a normal kid and have a normal life, the one preserved in Vanessa's neat scrapbooks and prom pictures – that past is probably best left here, packed away with all the other oddities in Vanessa's cabinet of curiosities.

It's time, as they say, to ramble on. (The "they" in this case being Led Zeppelin, and a tape Sam will probably be hearing all the way to the West Virginia border.)

So, after dinner last night, Sam hit the internet and searched until he found something that looked like a promising lead. Dean is calling Bobby about it now, pacing in small circles while he talks, ten yards away.

The screen door leading into the kitchen snaps back on its spring and _fwaps_ shut, and Sam looks up to see Vanessa, carrying a large paper bag.

"What's this?" Sam asks, when she hands it to him.

"Lunch for the road," she says. "Sandwiches and chips and a couple of apples. Oreos."

"You didn't have to do that," Sam tells her.

"I know. But I wanted to."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Sam reaches in through the Impala's open window and sets the bag on the passenger's seat.

"It was really good to see you again," Vanessa says. "I'm glad I ran into you at Lowe's and I'm not just saying that because you and Dean saved me from a ghost. It was just really good to see you again."

"It was good to see you again, too," Sam says. "And not just because you made us dinner and packed us a lunch for the road."

Vanessa shakes her head, and swats him lightly in the shoulder. "You know what I mean, though, right?"

"Yeah," he says, and nods. "I know what you mean."

"So is there any point in asking if you'll keep in touch this time?"

Sam would like to be able to say yes, and more than he thinks Vanessa can know. But . . .

"Probably not," Sam says. "What we do and everything, it just really doesn't lend itself to –"

"I get it," she says. "It's okay. I had pretty much figured that out. But I put my phone number and my e-mail address in the bag, anyway. Just in case you're ever in my neck of the woods again and need or want to crash in a room decorated in Early American Creepy."

"I left ours on the chalkboard in your kitchen. Just in case something else in there turns out to be creepier than you're expecting."

"Thanks," she says. "And if you just jinxed me, Sam, you had better believe I will be calling you. Probably from the It'll Do."

"Well, if I just jinxed you, you should call."

But only _if_. And they both know it.

They're silent for a moment, and then Vanessa says, "So, where are you headed now?"

"To beautiful, scenic Milwaukee," Dean says, coming across the yard to join them. "There's been a string of weirdass robberies up there. Might be our kind of thing."

"Robberies?" Vanessa asks. "So, what, like the ghosts of Bonnie and Clyde?"

"Nah," Dean says. "Took care of them years ago."

Vanessa's eyes widen in surprise. "Really?"

"No, Dean's kidding you," Sam says. At least he _thinks_ Dean is kidding her. But maybe that was one of the hunts Sam missed when he was at Stanford. Hell, maybe Dean got Dillinger, too.

Either way, the comment has neatly avoided actually answering Vanessa's not-quite-asked question about what they're heading off to hunt.

"Milwaukee's a long drive," Vanessa says.

"Not as long as some," Dean tells her.

"But we should probably get going," Sam says.

"Right," Vanessa says. She hugs them both, first Dean and then Sam. "Thank you, again. For everything."

"Anytime, sweetheart."

She waves, as they're getting into the car, and calls "take care" and "drive safe." Sam knows without looking that she's the sort who will stand in the yard and wave until they're out of sight. Dean pauses for a split second at the top of the hill in the driveway, glances into the rear view mirror, and then raises his hand in a single wave of farewell. And then he drives on, and the house disappears from view.

"What's in the bag, Sammy?" he asks, as Sam starts to twist around to put the bag Vanessa gave him in the backseat.

"Vanessa made us lunch. For the road." Sam opens the bag, reaches down into it, and inspects the contents. "Sandwiches and stuff."

"Yeah? Nice girl." Dean lets the car idle for a second at the end of the driveway. "You know, if you want to hang out here for another day or two—"

"We've got a case, Dean. We should head for Milwaukee."

"Yeah, you're right," Dean says. "It was just a thought." He pulls the car out onto the road. "You mind closing that window?"

"Sure," Sam says. "Guess it is a little cold for it."

"And only going get colder. Wisconsin in the winter, here we come."

Sam rolls the window back up while Dean pushes a cassette into the Impala's tape deck. And Dean either doesn't notice or doesn't comment on the small square of paper Sam lets drop out the window before he closes it. Vanessa's name, and phone number, and e-mail address, retrieved under the guise of looking though the lunch bag, flutter away in the wake of the car, and are gone.

As they reach the highway, Dean and Robert Plant start singing.

_Leaves are fallin' all around, time I was on my way.  
Thanks to you, I'm much obliged for such a pleasant stay._

Sam closes his eyes and leans his head back against the seat.

And with time on his hands and a lot to not think about, he starts making lists in his head.

Alabama . . . Alaska . . . Arizona . . .


End file.
